


Guy in Your MFA

by betts



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, But really more like, Christmas, Didn't Know They Were Dating, Drunken Confessions, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Graduate School, Halloween, Humor, Intercrural Sex, Jealousy, Literary References & Allusions, Mutual Pining, Roommates, Semi-Public Sex, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Teacher Bellamy, Thanksgiving, acquaintances to friends to best friends to lovers, brief clexa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-04-22 23:45:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 42,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14319714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: Clarke, failing to get into med school, accepts an offer into a creative writing MFA instead. So far so good, except there’s this writer in the program everyone keeps talking about like he’s some kind of prose god. When she meets him, she assumes he’s going to be a pretentious asshole. She’s ready to hate him. Shewantsto hate him.But then he ends up being actually kind of a nice guy.And she may or may not fall stupidly in love with him.Winner of the 2018 Bellarke Fan Work Award for Best College AU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I write a lot about fanfic in workshop, so I decided to write about workshop in fanfic. Unlike in workshop, I'm not afraid people are going to get into fanfic, but it's my biggest fear that someone will read this and want to get an MFA. So please do not do that.
> 
> Title from the Twitter account @GuyInYourMFA which gave me nightmares about getting an MFA years before I actually got one.
> 
> Not beta'd; I apologize for any errors.

* * *

  

 

* * *

 

Clarke would have rather dissected a dozen corpses than do what she was about to do.

The room had been silent for nearly thirty seconds. No one was looking at anyone else. Raven was intensely inspecting her pen. Lexa stared off into the distance as if she hadn’t heard. Monty was sitting on his hands. Jasper chewed his lip. The rest of them fidgeted uncomfortably, except for the hot guy at the end of the table whose arms were crossed over his chest and whose expression held the worst case of Resting Bitch Face Clarke had ever seen.

“I can go first,” Clarke said.

Marcus looked at her with a pleased smile and jotted her name on the syllabus. “Thank you, Clarke. I appreciate your bravery.” He glanced around the conference table and added, “Who would like to go second?”

Raven volunteered to workshop second, then Monty, Jasper, Harper, Murphy, and Nate.

“Lexa? Bellamy?” Marcus asked.

Bellamy. That was Hot Guy’s name. Of course it was. He looked older than the rest of them by a few years and not at all like he should be here, which was probably mean of Clarke to think but his visage didn’t necessarily scream _academic._ He was wearing a leather jacket and a t-shirt that had seen better days. His hair needed a cut. He looked at everyone like he was figuring out how best to kill them.

And he was the only one Clarke hadn’t met yet. Everyone else had attended the open houses, welcome dinners, and readings of the past month. The second-years answered her questions about the program and took her on campus tours. Her fellow first-years had taken composition prep with her over the summer and she’d gotten to know them well. Befriended them. She felt welcome here, unlike in her alma mater where she was just part of the faceless mass of biology majors. She had planned to go straight to med school after she graduated, but her MCATs weren’t stellar and her options were limited. She’d applied to a few MFAs as a back-up plan, having a minor in creative writing, but as she received her acceptance letters and started visiting schools, the MFA began to look more appealing than med school. There were no corpses in English departments. It was a two-year commitment instead of six. The program was fully funded. She’d get to teach a writing class, which sounded fun.

So she decided med school could wait. Every day she spent here affirmed her decision; she had never felt so accepted so immediately by her peers. Even Lexa, who was editor-in-chief of the school’s literary magazine, _Tondc_ —and overall a pretty intimidating human—added Clarke on Facebook and invited her to a welcome party at her apartment next weekend.

Until now, Clarke had only heard of Bellamy. The way people talked about him, he seemed like some kind of MFA ghost.

“He’s one of the best writers I’ve ever known,” Raven told her last week at coffee. It was a compliment but she had phrased it like an insult.

“Why haven’t I met him yet? Where is he?” Clarke had asked. The cursor on her laptop blinked sadly beside the heading ENGLISH COMPOSITION SYLLABUS.

“Who knows. He’s not around much.”

“Why not?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Aren’t you, like, friends?”

“Nope.”

“I thought everyone in the program was friends with everyone else.”

“We are,” Raven said. “Except him. Guys like Bellamy don’t really have friends.”

In the time between that conversation and now, Clarke discovered that Raven was right: no one knew a damn thing about Bellamy, but everyone thought he was an amazing writer. He never attended get-togethers, didn’t have any social media Clarke could stalk, and no one had his phone number.

“I’ll go next,” Lexa offered.

“Which leaves Bellamy,” Marcus said as he added their names to the schedule.

With the workshop cycle settled, Marcus went through the rest of the syllabus, which seemed mostly status quo. There were a couple additional assignments peppered into the schedule, a short reading list, and some best practices for writing crit letters. The only difference between this and the classes Clarke had taken in undergrad was that grad students seemed more serious about writing, and the room was smaller.

Marcus had everyone go around and introduce themselves even though they all already knew each other. Raven started.

“I’m Raven Reyes. I’m a second-year fiction student.”

“And what are you working on?” Marcus asked.

“My thesis, which is a collection of fabulist stories in the vein of Karen Russell and Claire Vaye Watkins.”

Clarke didn’t know what fabulist meant, nor that Raven wrote fabulism, which made her feel guilty for not asking sooner. She wrote the word in the corner of the syllabus to look up later.

They went around the table, and for the first time Clarke started to feel out of her element. Jasper wrote experimental nonfiction about his dead ex-girlfriend. Monty rambled off half a dozen names of writers who influenced his work; Clarke hadn’t heard of any of them. Murphy smugly name dropped authors, editors, and agents he had met over summer at a workshop in Portland.

It was Clarke’s turn. “I’m Clarke Griffin,” she said to her pencil so she wouldn’t have to look at anyone else. “I just graduated with a degree in biology. I write, um, YA, mostly. Some graphic narrative.”

She didn’t know why she chose that moment to look toward Bellamy, who was staring at her from the end of the table. There was something about having his attention on her that made her heart pick up speed.

“Are you working on anything?” Marcus asked.

“A novel. I have the first few chapters done. I’ll be workshopping it next week.”

Marcus smiled reassuringly. “I’m looking forward to reading it.”

Lexa was the only poet in the workshop and said she was working on some prose poems this semester. Harper wrote novellas. Nate wrote lyric essays. Then it was Bellamy’s turn.

“Bellamy Blake. Second year.”

His voice was deeper than Clarke thought it would be. He didn’t meet anyone’s gaze as he spoke.

After a pause, he added, “I write short fiction.”

That was it? Clarke felt like a suddenly deflating balloon. She was expecting him to rattle off Faulkner and Hemingway as influences. She wanted him to wax poetic about McCarthy. Maybe talk about how Sartre changed his life. She was ready to roll her eyes at him.

“Working on?” Marcus asked.

“A collection,” Bellamy said, as if it were obvious.

Clarke wanted to punch him. Where was the pretension? The self-aggrandizement? The arrogance, the panache? What was so special about him? He was just a dude who wrote short stories. Anyone could do that.  

Marcus thanked them for their introductions and had them read a Barthelme story aloud. The rest of the workshop flew by, and at the end, as they all shouldered their backpacks, Lexa announced, _“Tondc_ welcome party at my place on Friday.”

Bellamy followed Clarke out the door. He didn’t have a backpack, just a clipboard and a water bottle like a PE teacher. A Bic pen was perched behind his ear.

Before she could think better of it, she spun around and asked, “Are you going?”

She nearly ran into his chest. He was taller than he seemed sitting down. He stopped short and stared at her in surprise, as if a houseplant had just spoken to him.

“Have to,” he said. “I’m fiction editor.”

“Good,” Clarke replied. “I mean—not _good,_ but—you know what I mean. We haven’t, you know, met. Talked. I mean, until now. I’ve heard about you, is all—”

His eyebrows raised. A normal person might put her out of her misery, ease the tension by asking if she’d be going to the party too, but he stood silently as she continued gagging on the foot in her mouth. She could feel her face flush.

“Heard about me?” he asked.

“Yeah, just that, like, you’re a good writer and whatever.”

“And whatever.” Now his lips were pursed like he was trying not to smile.

“Okay, that you’re an amazing writer and everyone is super jealous.”

He let out a short breath that could have been a laugh. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he said, then walked past her toward the stairwell.

“See you Friday?” she called after him.

“Yep.”

 

* * *

 

“Why are you putting on makeup?” Raven asked. She was sitting on Clarke’s bed with her laptop on her lap.

“It’s a party,” Clarke said, her face hovering near the mirror she had propped on the floor in the corner. Except for the bed, she had no furniture and wasn’t planning to get any. Didn’t seem worth it for two years. She opted not to get internet either, in hopes she’d spend her time at the apartment writing. So far it didn’t work; she spent the same amount of money on lattes to use the coffeehouse’s internet instead. (The coffeehouse didn’t actually have a name. Everyone just called it “the coffeehouse.”)

“A  _Tondc_ party.”

“So?”

“So, it’s just craft beer and arguing about movie adaptations. Might as well wear your pajamas.”

Clarke looked at Raven through the reflection in the mirror. “Is that what you’re going in?”

Raven was wearing a crop top and yoga pants. Her hair was in a bun. She still managed to look like she belonged on a billboard for Lululemon.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s what you wear to class.”

“And teach in. You’re not here to impress anybody, Clarke. You’re here to write.”

“And do things adjacent to writing, like forming lifelong friendships with other writers.”

“Why do you need to look pretty for that?”

“Just let me do my thing and I’ll let you do yours.”

Raven returned her attention back to grading. Everyone had warned Clarke to stay on top of the grading pile, but she hadn’t taken heed. She’d only taught two classes and already had fifty submissions to grade and respond to. She thought composition would be easy but she taught at eight-thirty in the morning, and no amount of coffee or enthusiasm could jostle her two dozen freshmen into engaging in the class.

She blotted her lipstick and stood to inspect herself. The cocktail dress might be too much, but it was the only nice outfit she brought with her and she hadn’t had an excuse to wear it yet.

“How do I look?” she asked Raven.

Raven looked her up and down. “Like you’re going somewhere that isn’t a  _Tondc_ party.”

Clarke let out a frustrated huff and turned back around to unzip the cocktail dress and slide it off. Idly she said, “You know, Bellamy’s going to be there.”

Raven didn’t say anything. Clark shifted the hangers in her closet and pulled down a v-neck shirt to wear instead.

When Raven spoke, she was suddenly much closer. “Is that why you’re doing all this? Bellamy?”

“What? No.” Clarke tugged on the shirt and pushed past Raven to pull her jeans out of the hamper.

“Good,” Raven said, arms across her chest. “Because you’d have some pretty intense competition.”

Clarke shoved a foot through her pant leg. “What?”

“Every straight girl and even vaguely queer dude has been trying to sit on his dick for the past year. No one gets anywhere close.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Clarke said. She buttoned and zipped her jeans. “Why would anyone have a crush on someone like him?”

“Someone like him? What’s that mean?”

“You know. Dudes who can’t even see you. Don’t want to be friends. Take no interest.”

Raven looked away. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Don’t tell me you have a thing for him.”

“Ev-er-y-one does. There’s just something about him. He’s got this....it-factor. Like, he’s gonna get out of here and get a six-figure book deal. In ten years, they’ll be teaching his shit in high schools instead of, like, _Ethan Frome_ or whatever. We’ll be hearing about him until we die.”

“So you’re telling me,” Clarke said, “everyone wants to fuck Bellamy Blake because he’s a good writer.”

Raven gave her a look. “Why else would you fuck someone?”

“I think you’re overselling him.”

“I’m not the one who almost wore a five-hundred-dollar cocktail dress to a lit mag meeting.”

Clarke pulled her phone from the charger and jammed it in her back pocket. “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Lexa’s apartment was cozier than Clarke expected. On the walls hung paintings and photographs. Shelves towered with books. The place smelled like nag champa and there were two comfy, mismatched couches. No TV. Clarke wished she could come here instead of the coffeehouse to work.

People arrived slowly, six-packs and snacks in hand. Jasper ordered a few pizzas and everyone chipped in. Like Raven had predicted, Monty and Murphy had already begun debating James Franco’s recent failed attempt at adapting _As I Lay Dying._ From what Clarke overheard, they both agreed it was a shit-terrible movie, but where Murphy thought it shouldn’t be a movie at all, Monty insisted it could be done well “if you break the parameters of filmmaking,” whatever that meant. Clarke suspected he had no idea what he was talking about.

It was half past seven and Bellamy still hadn’t shown up. Clarke was sandwiched on the couch between Lexa and Harper, rotating an IPA against her palms. Someone turned on a stereo to a Cigarettes After Sex song, which was not at all conducive to partying. It was nothing like the parties at Clarke’s alma mater, where nineteen year olds shuffled lines of coke neatly on coffee tables, Solo cups littered every surface, and an orgy was afoot in a dark corner. Clarke used to go home with people whose names she never caught, a mindless lay to pass the time, to have something interesting to talk about, shake the stress of impending finals.

All the lights were on in Lexa’s apartment. Everyone had somewhere to sit. Most of the snacks were vegan and organic. The pizza was from the nice place in town instead of the shitty one. Harper was reading a book. As far as Clarke could tell, no one was flirting with anyone else, or if they were, they weren’t doing it in a way she was familiar with.

Bellamy showed up after eight. The pizza had disappeared and someone had already folded up the boxes and placed them in the recycling bin. Everyone cheered when he entered, which made him look at them in irritation, but Clarke swore she saw a slight blush on his cheeks.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said.

Jasper tried to shove a beer into his hands.

“I shouldn’t,” Bellamy said. “I can’t stay long.”

“C’mon,” Jasper said, and grabbed Bellamy’s hand to place the bottle in it.

“Fine. Just one. Then I gotta go.”

Clarke was on her third beer and feeling a little tipsy. Bellamy hadn’t noticed her. He stood in the corner with one hand in his pocket, and nursed his beer slowly while he nodded along to something Nate was telling him.

Clarke chugged the rest of her beer so she’d have an excuse to pass him to get to the kitchen. When she did, he gave her a short nod in greeting, and she offered a small smile in return. At the fridge she inspected the labels to find the one with the highest percentage of alcohol, popped the cap open, and leaned against the counter to join the conversation between Bellamy and Nate.

“I think Junot Díaz has a point about MFAs,” Nate was saying. “They’re so white.”

“He went to Cornell,” Bellamy replied. “I don’t think our program’s like that. Give it a shot.”

“I don’t know, man.”

“Have you talked to Jaha yet? Indra? Meet with them. Get them on your committee. Don’t judge the next two years by Marcus’ reading list.”

“I haven’t had a problem,” Clarke said.

They stared at her.

“As a bisexual, I mean. Writing queer fiction. I feel pretty welcome here.”

“That’s good,” Bellamy said. “Glad to hear it.”

“We’re not talking about queerness, and anyway, I’m gay,” Nate said. “No queer authors on Marcus’ reading list either.”

“We have an admired prose assignment,” Clarke offered. “We can bring in some queer authors of color. Maybe give him some new material.”

Nate nodded. “Sure. Just feels like we shouldn’t have to.”

Instead of a Bic pen behind Bellamy’s ear, there was a cigarette.

“Do you smoke?” she asked.

“Yeah, want one?”

“Sure.”

She followed him out the door, through the lobby, and onto the small landing that served as a porch. Nate didn’t join.

Bellamy popped another cigarette from the pack and handed it to her along with his lighter. She lit the cigarette and handed the lighter back. He lit his own. They smoked in silence for a few minutes.

“Biology, huh?” he asked.

“Pre-med.”

“MFA’s a long way from med school.”

“I know. It’s just how it worked out.”

“Must’ve been a hell of an application.”

“Jaha is a family friend.”

Another silence.

“What about you? Where were you before this?” Clarke asked.

“Jersey. Working.”

“Doing what?”

“Construction mostly. Anything that paid well.”

“What’s your undergrad in?”

One corner of his mouth tilted up as he blew out a stream of smoke. “Humanities.”

“From where?”

“OU. It was an online program. Hence the ambiguity.”

“What made you decide to get an MFA?”

“My sister.”

Clarke had been expecting something less concrete, an admission of a higher calling, an aimlessness of everyday life and needing a break from the tedium.

“Your sister made you get an MFA.”

“No, she goes to school here. Kinesiology.”

“And you came with her.”

“Writing was the only program I qualified for.”

“So you don’t actually like to write.”

“Sure I do. I just don’t take it as seriously as everyone else.”

“What are you going to do next year?”

“Stay on as an adjunct, maybe, until Octavia graduates.”

“Then what?”

“Follow her.”

“You don’t want to be a teacher or editor or anything?”

“Nope.”

“What about publication?”

“My stuff’s not good enough.”

“That’s not true.”

He snubbed out his cigarette on the railing. “You haven’t read it yet.”

“I just know.”

“Because everyone says so, sure.” He picked up his beer and took a long pull.

“They do.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I’m not. It’s true.”

He fell silent again. Clarke finished her cigarette and bent down to put it out on the stoop. When she stood up, Bellamy was holding the door open for her.

“You should stay a while longer,” she said, standing her ground. She didn’t know when she’d get to talk to him like this again.

“Can’t. Gotta head out.”

“And do what?”

His eyes crinkled as if to smile but his lips didn’t follow. “Write.”

“It’s Friday night.”

“Best time for writing.”

“Is not. Friday is a time for partying.”

“Says the twenty-two year old.”

“How dare you, I’m twenty-three.”

Bellamy let out a laugh. Clarke wanted to punch the air in victory.

“What about you?” she asked.

“Old enough to know Friday nights in college towns are better spent in front of a typewriter.”

“Seventy-five, then? Am I close?”

Now he was smiling. She hadn’t seen him really smile like this yet, with his teeth, dimples dotting his cheeks under his freckles. “Twenty-eight.”

“Not even thirty?” Clarke finally passed him to go inside. She looked behind her. “Come on, one more beer and I’ll leave you alone forever.”

His smile hung lopsided as he caught her gaze. “Then I’m definitely not having another.”


	2. Chapter 2

Clarke was too nervous to sleep the night before workshop, knowing that by now probably everyone had read the chapters she submitted, had maybe already written their crit letters. She wasn’t afraid of them hating it, seeing flaws in it and pointing them out. She was afraid of them not giving a damn. Of getting to the end of her twenty-five pages and going, “Well that was nice.”

She could handle jackasses who had no respect for queer YA. She could handle harsh criticism. She couldn’t handle apathy.

When she had first started writing, she let her mom read one of her stories. When her mom finished, she said, “I liked it.” Clarke had never gotten over that. _I liked it._ Her mother might as well have said, “This was a thing that I read. Good job on bringing it into existence.”

What would she do if Bellamy said he liked it? What if his crit letter was as sparse as his conversation? What if he had been expecting something better than what she gave? What if he thought YA was a waste of time and Clarke didn’t belong in the program? What if Jasper and Monty were snapping each other sections of her prose and laughing at it? What if Raven didn’t want to be friends with her anymore?

No, that was ridiculous. Out of everyone, she knew Raven would respect Clarke’s work. She might not like it, but she would treat it with reverence and offer her complete honesty in turn. Clarke was sure of that, if nothing else.

With that thought, Clarke finally calmed enough to fall asleep.

 

* * *

 

“The ending is tidy,” Lexa said. “All the conflicts get sewn up too neatly. It’s not realistic.”

 _It’s not supposed to be realistic LEXA,_ Clarke wrote in her notebook in lieu of a reply. _It’s a SPACE OPERA._

“Quaker knock that,” Jasper added. “If this is the first chapter of a book, it doesn’t feel like there’s anywhere to go from here.”

The workshop had gone well until now. Raven had introduced Clarke’s piece with a concise summary, and most everyone had something nice to say about it. Monty liked the quality of the prose. Harper found it immersive. Marcus enjoyed the easy banter between the characters.

The only person who hadn’t spoken was Bellamy. Clarke kept stealing glances at him. A print-out of her chapter was sitting on top of his clipboard. She couldn’t see any marks on the first page. Maybe he hadn’t read it.

“Maybe it could work as its own story,” Raven suggested.

 _I love you Raven but not a short story,_ Clarke wrote. _There ARE conflicts open do any of you know how to read??_

“It’s not deep enough to be a short story,” Nate added. That one stung. “You’re right, there’s no open conflict, but it definitely feels like it’s headed somewhere. I just don’t see the direction.”

Clarke took a deep breath to keep herself from screaming.

Bellamy lifted the top page, flipped to the third and fourth. Finally he said, “The seeds of plot development are there in internal conflict. Stories are allowed to be reactive.”

“What do you mean?” Lexa asked.

“The dad got thrown out of an airlock,” Bellamy said. “The entire story might be about the narrator grieving. It might be about the Ark running out of oxygen. Just because the inciting incident is over doesn’t mean the story is.”

“I’m just saying,” Jasper added, “if this were a book and I got to the end of this chapter, I’m not sure I’d want to turn the page.”

“I would,” Bellamy said. “I’d keep reading even if nothing happens the rest of the story. We have a thoughtful narrator with a brilliant voice carrying us through a well-rendered world.”

Clarke was about to puke up her heart. Her pen trembled in her sweaty grip.

 _“I would”,_ she wrote.

“I have a question about the white space on page nine,” Lexa said.

As everyone flipped to page nine, Clarke caught Bellamy’s gaze and mouthed _thank you._

He offered her a small smile, then looked away to turn to page nine.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the class was torture. They discussed a Raymond Carver story, and Clarke had to sit on her hands to keep herself from thumbing through the pile of marginalia and crit letters she’d been handed. Bellamy’s was somewhere in the middle. Raven’s was on top, which she had doodled all over with a green felt-tip pen. In the margins she’d written several “haha”s and “oh my god”s.

Clarke was starving by the time she got home, but instead of eating, she wrenched her stack of feedback from her bag and flipped through to find Bellamy’s.

The only thing that indicated it was his copy was the sloppy B at the top right-hand corner. The crit letter was appended to the end. Her heart pounded as she folded over the pages of her manuscript. She was expecting a half-page of notes, maybe a full page since it was the beginning of the semester. Maybe just a few bullet points.

He’d typed up three entire single-spaced pages of feedback. Eleven-point Garamond font. She couldn’t believe it.

_Dear Clarke,_

_Thanks for sharing the first chapter of_ The Ark _with us, a young adult novel about an unnamed (bisexual!) narrator trapped in space under an oppressive regime. The story begins with our narrator in a place called “the skybox,” a juvenile delinquent prison wherein she uses a dwindling graphite supply to draw earthen landscapes on the walls. Believe me, I can relate._

As Clarke continued reading the summary, she’d never felt so understood. Bellamy noticed all the important parts that seemed to go unnoticed by everyone else, the details that would eventually weave into an overarching narrative after the events of the first chapters.

_Clarke, I don’t say this often, or I guess ever, but I would read an entire car manual if it were written in this voice. The way the narrator perceives her surroundings shows a level of competency and self-awareness not many characters possess, I speculate because not many writers are themselves competent or self-aware. I know The Author Is Dead but I think it’s a testament to your own perception to be able to render this world and its happenings with such stark clarity. In just 25 pages, I care so much about this girl and her plight, whatever that might end up being. She is flawed and complicated, but strong, and I trust her._

The glowing praise continued for another page and a half. He recalled specific lines he found compelling, commented on the effective world-building, and then, to her surprise, started talking about himself.

_When I was a teenager, we didn’t have a lot of money. My mom was a seamstress who worked late hours and my dad wasn’t in the picture. We couldn’t afford afterschool care, so Octavia and I spent our time in the library. I read through the entire YA section by the time I was thirteen, and this story reminds me so much of what I loved about those books. This was a time when YA was barely monitored, and the books were darker, raunchier, and more grotesque than I think anyone gave them credit for. They didn’t pull their emotional punches. They were dramatic and interesting and funny. I grew eventually to appreciate capital-L literature (even though I don’t think there’s really a difference) but I didn’t start that way. My first love of reading was cult YA sci fi, and I want to thank you for reminding me of that._

_Sorry to besmirch your crit letter with my personal digressions. Can’t wait for the next chapter._

_Best,_

_Bellamy_

Clarke had to set the letter down and breathe. It was so hard finding people with the same respect for her genre as she had, who could see the value in adventures about teen girls in space. Who, like Clarke, spent their adolescent years in libraries, pulling down any paperback they could reach. No one had ever read her writing this closely. At best, people read it as a favor to her, not because they actually enjoyed it. She’d never known the feeling of someone personally invested in something she had created.

She turned back to the first page and read the letter again.

 

* * *

 

Clarke swore coming into this program she wouldn’t become an MFA stereotype, but as the weeks passed, she found her apartment had somehow become infested with books, which teetered in stacks beside empty pizza boxes. She couldn’t touch a piece of paper without getting a coffee ring on it. She closed down the coffeeshop nightly only to pack up and move to the library. The only things in her fridge were a couple Miller Lites and a rotten avocado. She found herself saying things like, “I think this paragraph deserves a bit of unpacking,” and, “The prose here is evocative, but does it further the conflict?” She owed fifty dollars in library fees and had three unpaid parking tickets. Her students had stopped coming to class and she tried not to blame herself. They were all getting As anyway because she didn’t have time to grade critically. She had four unanswered emails from overachievers asking for clarification on her vague assignment descriptions. She didn’t think it was professional to reply, “You’re going to get an A no matter what because you try hard and I like you,” but she wanted to.

Now it was late October and the air had turned crisp and cold. She was at the coffeeshop holed up in her favorite corner. It was only eight but already dark outside, and the menu boasted hot cider so she had started drinking it constantly instead of coffee. Three sugar sores dotted her tongue.

“Mind if I sit here?” someone asked.

She looked up from her laptop. Bellamy stared down at her. She gaped at him.

“Um, yeah, sure,” she said, and shuffled her scattered papers together. Bellamy unshouldered the messenger bag he was carrying and sat down opposite her. He leaned down and pulled a laptop from his bag. It was a small, cheap-looking thing held together by duct tape. The logo looked like it was in Russian.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” Clarke said.

Bellamy opened his computer. “Octavia has friends over. Needed some quiet.”

“It’s Friday. Must mean you’re writing.”

His eyes darted toward her, amused. “My piece is due next week.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Nope.”

“C’mon, I can help you with it.”

“You’ll help me by reading it and telling me how shitty it is.”

“I won’t do that.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“What’s it about? How long is it? Who are your influences?”

He glared at her. “If I wanted to get grilled with questions, I would’ve stayed home.”

“What’s the theme of your collection? Who’s on your thesis committee? What’s your favorite book?”

Bellamy’s glare cracked into a smile and he lowered the lid of his laptop again. “You’re not gonna stop, are you?”

“I get to see you once a week, Bellamy Blake, and you always duck out before I can corner you.”

“I didn’t know my company was so desired.”

At that, she blushed, but didn’t back down. “I like spending time with my friends.”

He raised his eyebrows. “So we’re friends.”

“Yep.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.”

He sat back in his chair. “Alright.”

“Friends have each other’s phone numbers, you know.”

He eyed her for a long moment, lips pressed together, expression faux-stern. Then he took the pen from behind his ear and pulled over the nearest piece of paper. He jotted down his number and pushed the paper back toward her.

“I’m going to text you,” Clarke warned.

“Sure.”

“I’ll send you memes. Ask how your day is going. Tell you good morning.”

“I’d hate that,” he said, but he was still smiling.

“Good. I’m gonna smother you in friendship.”

“You know what else friends do?”

“What?”

“Stay quiet while they work on stuff.”

“Fine,” Clarke said, and turned her attention back to her stack of grading.

Bellamy lifted the lid of his laptop and began typing. After a few minutes, Clarke took her phone out of her pocket and programmed his number into it. Then she texted, _How’s the piece coming along? xoxo ur friend Clarke_

A moment later, Bellamy’s pocket buzzed. He took his phone out and checked it.

“I hate you,” he said.

Clarke looked in her coffee cup, which was empty. “What are your thoughts on cider?”

 

* * *

 

The coffeehouse closed at ten that night. Clarke and Bellamy were the last patrons to pack up.

“Where you headed now?” Bellamy asked as he stood and shouldered his messenger bag.

“Back to my apartment I guess.”

“Hungry?”

“Are you asking to have dinner with me?”

“That’s what friends do, right?”

“It is.”

“Come on, I know a place.”

Bellamy led her across the street, down an alleyway, and up a rickety stairwell that Clarke’s mother would surely cite as not being ADA-compliant. This town didn’t seem to be big on naming their restaurants. Like the coffeehouse, the only thing marking it as a business was a flickering neon OPEN sign hung on the side of the door.

Bellamy held it open for her. The place had red carpet on the walls and blinking Christmas tree lights strung up around the ceiling. A jukebox was playing real-deal vinyls, the Allman Brothers. The booths looked like reappropriated church pews. Bellamy slid into one and Clarke took a seat across from him. The menu was a laminated placemat.

“You come here a lot?” Clarke asked as she scanned the menu.

“Kinda. It’s a townie bar. No undergrads, and the grad students haven’t found it yet.”

“What if I show it to them?”

He smiled again. “Then it wouldn’t be our special place.”

Damn him, he was right. “Damn you, you're right.”

A server came up and clapped Bellamy on the shoulder. He was skinny middle-aged guy with a ball cap that said MAKE AMERICA GAY AGAIN. A tea towel was thrown over his shoulder. He appeared to be the only employee, and Clarke and Bellamy were the only customers.

“The usual?” he asked.

Bellamy nodded. “Thanks.”

The server looked to Clarke. “And you?”

“The same,” she said.

“Two buckets of calamari coming up.”

As the guy walked away, Clarke asked, “What did I just order?”

“A cheeseburger with no pickles and a Guinness,” Bellamy said.

“That’s probably what I would've ordered anyway.”

“Nice.”

“Have you noticed we kind of have a lot in common?”

Bellamy picked at the frayed corner of his menu. “I’m starting to see that.”

“Took you long enough.”

“We’ve known each other what, a month?”

“I’m twenty-three. That’s like an eternity for me.”

“Well us septuagenarians tend to move a bit slower.”

“Normally by now I would have made you a scrapbook of our zany adventures. Matching tattoos. Long hikes where we talk about our lives’ true purpose.”

“Wouldn’t mind that last one.” He cleared his throat and fidgeted in the booth, then added, “Before it gets cold, I mean. Lot of good hiking trails around here.”

Clarke leaned forward and looked him in the eye. “I’m holding you to that.”

“You have my number now. You can bug me about it as much as you want.”

“I’m holding you to that, too.”

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

“You have no idea.”

They talked for a while longer. Clarke pestered him about the story he was working on. He didn’t budge, but the conversation moved easily past it. For a guy who didn’t talk much, he was an exceptional conversationalist: politely inquisitive, good eye contact, never spoke out of turn or interrupted, laughed at her jokes. Nor did he seem to run out of things to say. Clarke had always considered herself an outgoing person, but she found it hard to jive with most people. Got along with them, sure, but speaking to them with the level of enthusiasm and interest she was now direcing at Bellamy was a rarity, and even more of a rarity to find that he handed it back to her in equal measure.

The food was given to them in a little red basket stuffed with onion rings and a side of something orange to dip them in. The burger ended up being one of the best Clarke had eaten in years, since her dad passed away. She didn’t even miss the pickles. The Guinness paired well with the burger. She couldn’t eat it all, and offered the rest to Bellamy while she leaned back in the booth and told him about all the reasons she thought med school might not be for her.

“You don’t need to worry about it,” he said around an onion ring.

“Why?”

He shrugged like it was obvious. “You’re going to sell _The Ark_ for six figures and a movie deal. You’re a writer, Clarke.”

No one had ever said anything like that to her before. Everyone she talked to about writing treated it like a hobby, not a viable career option. Not something to build a life from.

“You really think so?”

“You’ve got something special. I know you said you’re only here because you ran out of options, but I think you’re here to foster what you’re really passionate about, and if you stick with it, you’ll find success.”

Clarke had to look away. “Bet you say that to all the girls.”

“I don’t like anyone well enough for that.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It really means a lot to me.”

She wanted to make a joke about how she still had an adverb problem, but instead let the conversation fall silent. The jukebox fell silent, too.

“Do you have a quarter?” she asked.

He fished in his pocket and pulled out a handful of change, picked out a few quarters and handed them over.

“Thanks,” she said, and went over to the jukebox. She slid the quarters in and flipped through the selections. Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, CCR. She felt him come up behind her and look over her shoulder. His body heat seeped through her jacket. If she tilted back just an inch they’d be touching.

She hit play and turned around. He didn’t back away, was standing much too close.

“Dance with me,” she said.

“I don’t dance.”

Before he could step away she roped her arms around his neck. “Friends dance with each other.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said, but his hands found her hips and he let her lead him.

She’d chosen “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” the original Bob Dylan version.

“Good choice,” he said.

“My dad used to sing this to me.”

“He doesn’t anymore?”

“He’s dead.”

“Sorry to hear that.” After a pause, Bellamy added, “My mom is, too.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it.”

“Yeah. Really does.”

Clarke inched closer to him, rested her head on his chest. He held her more tightly to him. She listened to his heart. It might have been her imagination, but it seemed to be beating fast.


	3. Chapter 3

In true Bellamy fashion, he waited until the last minute to submit his story to workshop. Clarke got the email at midnight on Wednesday. She’d been about to go to bed, but instead she stared at the notification and told herself to read it after class tomorrow. Not to seem overeager.

Her willpower crumbled. Just a peek, she told herself. She opened the doc, which was called “workshop 1.docx.” His name was in the corner, and underneath it, the title: “Wanheda.” It was twelve pages.

It began, _Wanheda is the commander of death._

Clarke blinked, and the story was over. She felt as if she’d held her breath while reading and only at the end—Wanheda succumbing to her wounds, finally making herself one with death—did she exhale. She was speechless. She couldn’t think of a single criticism, liked it better than everything on Marcus’ reading list so far. And, if she was being honest with herself, liked it a lot better than anything else anyone had workshopped.

What feedback would she be able to give? “Wanheda” was a masterpiece. It belonged in _The New Yorker._

She wanted to save it for her crit letter, but she couldn’t help herself. She pulled up a text and typed, _I want to read everything you’ve ever written now including your grocery lists thanks_

He was the kind of guy who kept read receipts on. The text had been read right away, and the ellipses bubble rose and fell for a handful of seconds.

_That was fast._

_Friends read each other’s workshop submissions right away_

_I’m beginning to think you’re making up all these friend rules._

_No I’m not,_ she replied. _It’s the law_

_I better be proactive then. You should send me everything you have of The Ark._

_Doesn’t seem fair to the cohort to give you chapters before them_

_Friends let friends read chapters in advance. It’s the law._

_By that logic you should send me your next piece early_

_Not gonna happen, princess. I work to deadline._

_You’re the worst_

He sent a kiss emoji in reply.

 

* * *

 

 _Dear Bellamy,_ Clarke typed. She froze. Cracked her knuckles. Took a sip of cider. Checked Facebook for ten minutes. Clicked back to the doc.

_“Wanheda” is a short story told in close third present about the commander of death and her pursuit of dying._

Clarke sucked at summaries, but forced herself to continue.

_This piece is a strange cross between Virginia Woolf and Alice Munro. It’s equal parts beautiful, funny, and haunting. Your prose is deeply textured without becoming indulgent. Though I’ve never been anywhere near Appalachia, you render the space so vividly it feels both like I’ve been there but also has a surreality that makes it seem like it can’t possibly exist._

She was already veering into compliment territory. This was a nightmare. Normally she wrote her crit letters and found herself trimming and revising them, having to pull back on the prescriptiveness, but with Bellamy, she felt like there were no words worthy enough for “Wanheda.”

_I’m being serious when I say I want to read the rest of your work. I probably won’t be able to give you much criticism, but I make a good cheerleader. (No, really, I was a cheerleader in high school. I’ll show you the pictures sometime.) Maybe we can have a reading party? I’ll give you the rest of The Ark, you give me your stories. I’ll bring the beer. It’ll be great._

This crit letter was a mess. She wrote out a few more rambling, praise-filled paragraphs and ended with:

_I can’t think of any criticisms right now, but if I do I’ll let you know. I'd love to hear about your process, too. Maybe we can grab a coffee and talk about it sometime?_

_Your friend,_

_Clarke_

It was terrible, but it would have to do.

 

* * *

 

Clarke was beginning to embarrass herself. She couldn’t seem to shut up.

“Like, Wanheda is invoking the body politic, right?” Clarke said, and immediately regretted it. She could feel her face grow hot. Why couldn’t she ever say anything normal in workshop?

“The what?” Raven asked.

Clarke refused to look at Bellamy but she could feel his eyes on her. Her face turned redder.

“It’s from _Richard II,”_ she said. “Actually, nevermind. It’s dumb.”

“I want to hear it,” Bellamy said, even though he wasn’t supposed to talk.

“Okay, well, Richard’s internal conflict involves possessing two beings, the body politic and the body natural. The body politic is, like, an eternal form. It’s his kingliness, sort of, but what creates the conflict in the story is that he’s a shitty king, right? He doesn’t know how to make decisions, changes his mind too easily, seizes and pillages without consequence. Enter the body natural, a thing that feels emotion and pain and eventually dies.”

“What’s that have to do with Wanheda?” Raven asked.

“Wanheda has the same conflict, but in literal terms. She doesn’t actually know if she has the body politic or the body natural, if she’s really the commander of death or just more tenacious than everyone else. She’s moving through life not knowing if she’s actually immortal—if she’s a legend or just a person. It’s inverting the lens with which we usually see the supernatural. It’s like, this could be fabulism, a story about a woman with superhuman powers, or it could be realism, just a lady who got lost in the woods one day. By offering doubt to the experience of legends, it allows the reader to question the stakes of their own experience.”

Clarke took a long pull from her water bottle in hopes someone else would pick up the train of conversation, but to her horror, a silence lingered. She set the bottle down and risked a glance at Bellamy, who was staring at her, and smiling in a weird way he hadn’t directed at her before. In awe, sort of. She had to look away before she burst into flames.

“Excellent point, Clarke,” Marcus said. “Does anyone else have any comments about Wanheda’s character development?”

 

* * *

 

 _What are you doing right this very now?_ Clarke texted.

As always, Bellamy replied immediately. _Grading._

_Well stop it let’s go for a hike_

She was prepared for his inevitable reluctance and had come up with counterpoints for any reason he would say no. Halloween was coming up and the past couple days had been an Indian summer. The trees were red and orange but it was seventy outside—perfect day for hiking.

 _Ok,_ Bellamy replied.

_That was easier than it should have been. You okay?_

_I’m fine._

They met at the trail entrance an hour later. Clarke had brought a backpack and two water bottles, but Bellamy showed up empty-handed. He was wearing his usual jeans and a henley.

“That’s not really hiking attire,” Clarke said when he approached.

“Paved trail. It's not really hiking.”

They started walking and Clarke launched into a story about a student who came to class drunk. Bellamy didn’t say anything so she continued talking about teaching, then complaining about teaching, then complaining about composition as a forced general elective with a fraught history she had learned about from a rhetoric PhD candidate. "It's a class that only exists to fund the English department. Like, what a cash cow, make a class that every student at the school is forced to take, then rake in their tuition dollars, and pay your TAs a pittance to teach it. The funding package lures potential students in and gives them notable alumni later to lure even more potentials. All under the guise of the noble pursuit of knowledge. It's exploitation on a level I can't wrap my brain around."

Still Bellamy was silent.

“Okay. Something’s wrong,” she said.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“There’s normal levels of Bellamy Blake quiet, then there’s this.”

“I’m fine.”

“We’re friends, remember? You can tell me things about your life.” After another few seconds, Clarke added, “I care about you, you know.”

Another silence, but this one felt thick, and Clarke wondered if she should have maybe kept her mouth shut. They moved to the side of the path while two bicyclists pedaled by, and when they moved back, Bellamy said, “My sister wants to transfer after this semester.”

“Where?”

“Rutgers.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Follow her I guess. Drop out.”

“You only have one semester left. You can catch up with her after you graduate.”

“She’s not even twenty.”

“She’s an adult, Bell. She can live in a dorm like every other undergrad in America.”

“And party every night? Get drugged? Raped? I don’t think so.”

“You can’t protect her forever.”

“Watch me.”

“Does she appreciate your protective-older-brotherness?”

“She used to.”

“But now she’s grown up and wants some space.”

“I guess.” He paused and added, “But—I can’t give her that.”

“Why not?”

“I promised our mom I’d look out for her no matter what.”

“So you’re going to live with her your entire life?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“That’s unreasonable.”

Bellamy moved to the side again as a group of joggers passed. They fell quiet for another minute or so, until he said, “I know. I know it’s unreasonable. It’s just—I didn’t think it would happen so fast. I thought we’d get through college together, and by some miracle I’d be okay with her moving on. That I’d have an epiphany and suddenly be fine letting her go.”

“Have you read Baxter’s ‘Against Epiphanies’?”

“How did you have time to read craft books during pre-med?”

“They were more interesting than bio textbooks. Anyway, my point is, stories don’t have to have epiphanies.”

“It’s not a story. It’s my life.”

“Aren’t lives just complicated, plotless stories?”

“You sound like a memoirist.”

“That’s an idea.”

“What?”

“You could write some nonfiction.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. The entire cohort would collectively nut if you wrote a personal essay.”

“I’d bore them to death.”

“No way. You have no idea how people talk about you behind your back.”

“I’m not interesting enough to be talked about.”

Clarke opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it again.

"What?" Bellamy asked.

Finally she blurted out, “I really didn’t like you when I first met you.”

“Thanks.”

“I just mean,” Clarke said, “everyone talked about you so highly. I assumed you were an egomaniac. Pretentious. I thought if everyone looked up to you, that meant you’d be looking down at everyone else.”

“I’m not big on Lexa’s prose poetry.”

“But you offer it the same respect as everyone else’s work and recognize that just because it’s not your personal taste doesn’t mean it’s worthless.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“I’m trying to say—” Clarke tried to collect her thoughts. “I think writing is your passion too, and you’re amazing at it, and I’d hate to see you sabotage your own success because of an unreasonable promise you made to your mother years ago. Even though we both had excuses to apply, the truth is that we belong here.” She stopped walking and touched his arm so he’d face her. “You belong here. Don’t leave.”

He looked at her for a long moment. She let her hand slip down his arm and squeezed his hand in her own. His grip was loose at first, but after a second, he squeezed back.

“Thanks,” he said. “I'll think about it.”

They kept walking, but she didn’t let go of his hand.

 

* * *

 

On Halloween, _Tondc_ held a reading in the bookstore. Lexa asked Bellamy to read for the event along with a few others. The entire department had shown up plus a few undergrads who had to go to outside readings as an assignment for a class. Clarke sat near the back with Raven so they’d be closer to the pumpkin cookies.

Lexa took the podium and thanked everyone for attending. She announced the new issue of _Tondc_ would be coming out in December and the theme was a pun: “The Boundary Issue.” She encouraged everyone to spread the word to writer friends outside the program that they were open for submissions.

“Our first reader tonight is Bellamy Blake,” Lexa said. She read his bio off her phone. “‘Bellamy Blake is a second-year MFA student in fiction.’ And that’s it. That’s all it says. Okay, then. Let’s welcome Bellamy.”

Everyone clapped and Bellamy took the podium. He was wearing a black button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of grey slacks. He ran a hand through his hair which made it messier than it was before.

“Jesus,” Raven muttered.

Clarke bit her cheek.

Bellamy only glanced up briefly before training his eyes back to the bundle of papers in his grip. “This is a pretty new story. And it’s uh, inspired by a friend of mine. It’s called ‘Wanheda.’” He cleared his throat. “‘Wanheda is the commander of death.’”

Clarke was just as enrapt listening to the story as she had been reading it. She could pick out the revisions he’d made, mostly cutting exposition to keep it near the ten-page mark rather than twelve. Lexa had been the only one in workshop to offer criticism. She told him to start the story more quickly and end it more abruptly, and that the last page or so could be cut. Clarke didn’t agree with her at all, and said so, but in retrospect she could see how the story might have been improved with a little less throat-clearing in the beginning and fewer descriptions of trees near the end.

Bellamy’s reading voice was lower and slower than his speaking voice, more even. Listening to him felt like being rocked into a lull, like he’d spent a significant amount of time reading aloud to someone with the specific intention of putting them to sleep. Clarke imagined him reading to Octavia at night as children, developing a love for storytelling by seeing how it offered an escape, a safe passage into dreams.

Clarke found herself tearing up near the end. She was glad to be beside a window, so she could stare out of it toward the parking lot and now-bare trees below. Wanheda was dead and the story ended, and everyone clapped. Jasper whistled. Clarke looked up in time to see Bellamy leaving the podium, staring at her as if for her approval. She broke his gaze and wiped her eyes before joining in on the applause.

Jasper read next, then a poet named Fox whom Clarke had only met a couple times. Lexa ended the reading with a plea to be safe tonight.

As everyone mingled and finished off the pumpkin cookies, Bellamy got bombarded with people telling him how great the story was. Clarke waited her turn, and when she had finally elbowed her way beside him, she punched him on the shoulder and said, “That was alright.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Coming out for a drink?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“You should.”

A girl came up behind him and jumped on his back. It surprised him but he caught her legs around his hips anyway, thoughtlessly. She roped her arms around his neck and smacked a kiss to his temple. “You were so great.”

She had long black hair and only slightly fewer freckles than Bellamy, and wore a hoodie with the school logo on it.

He let go of her legs and she slid to the ground. “Clarke, this is Octavia. Octavia, Clarke.”

“Nice to meet you,” Clarke said. “Can you convince him to come out for a drink with us?”

Octavia gave him a hard stare and said, “I’m going out for a drink with Clarke and her friends.”

Bellamy returned her stare. “You’re not twenty-one yet.”

“I didn’t say I’d drink alcohol.”

Bellamy looked to Clarke for back-up.

“I’m not on your side here,” Clarke said.

“Fine,” Bellamy relented. “We’ll stay for one drink and then we’re going home.”

Octavia held her hand up. Clarke high-fived her.

 

* * *

 

The bar had darts and pool and cheap-ass beer. Some sad Halloween decorations were hung on the walls. It was small enough that the creative writing department nearly packed the place. Octavia had already met all the second years but she wasted no time in getting to know the first years. She seemed to take to Jasper and Monty immediately, who taught her how to play darts.

Clarke shot pool with Raven. Bellamy was at the bar talking to Lexa. After Lexa, Murphy. After Murphy, Jasper and Monty and Octavia crowded around him and Clarke heard Jasper shout, “Shots!”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Raven said, leaning on her cue.

Clarke tapped the nine-ball into a pocket and circled the table to nudge in the thirteen. “He’ll be fine.”

He was not fine.

It was nearly one in the morning and the bar had cleared out except for Octavia and Clarke, who were sober, and Jasper, Monty, Raven, and Bellamy, who were shit-faced.

“Party continues at my house!” Octavia said.

“Can I get the tab for him?” Clarke asked the bartender, pointing to Bellamy, who was wavering on his feet. He’d unbuttoned his shirt to expose a thin white undershirt that clung to his chest, and which Clarke tried very hard not to stare at. His side was pressed against hers. Then his arm was around her waist. Then his cheek was resting on top of her head.

“You’re the best, Clarke,” he said.

The bartender printed out a receipt and handed it to her. Bellamy had run up a forty-dollar tab.

“Give me your wallet,” she said.

He let go of her to fish in his pocket and hand her his wallet, a leather tri-fold thing. She opened the top flap and found his license. His hair was a lot shorter in it. His birthday was in February. He was apparently six feet tall.

“Don’t look at that,” he said.

“Do you want to pay with cash or card?”

“Cash,” he said.

She pulled out two twenties and a five and left them on the bar, then handed his wallet back to him. He probably could have done it himself, but he also seemed the type to tip excessively out of drunken sentimentality. They met up with Octavia, Raven, Jasper, and Monty outside. Monty was throwing peanuts into Jasper’s mouth and missing. Octavia cheered them on. Raven was coaching Monty on his throws.

It was like herding cats, trying to get them all to Clarke’s car, which was parked three blocks down. Octavia, Raven, Jasper, and Monty had dashed ahead. Bellamy stayed in step with Clarke. It had gotten cold outside but felt good after being in the stifling bar.

“Did you really like my reading?” Bellamy asked.

Clarke gave him a sidelong glance. “You know I did.”

“I didn’t mean to drink this much,” he said. “I never drink this much.”

“It’s okay to loosen up every once in a while.”

“Your fault.”

“What’s my fault?”

“That I can loosen up.” He gave an exaggerated shrug. “You make me feel safe.”

“I do?”

“Like. Like normally, I feel like I have to set a good example or something. Be a leader or whatever. But now you’re the leader.” As he said it, he nudged Clarke’s shoulder.

“I don’t know about that,” Clarke said.

“Even if you aren’t, you’re still—you’re fun to be around. I can lighten up around you. It’s like. When I’m around you, nothing bad can happen. You wouldn’t let anything bad happen.”

It was her turn to nudge him. “I think you’re fun, too.”

After a few silent steps, Bellamy asked, “Can we hold hands again?” He held his hand out to her.

She smiled at him, took his hand, threaded their fingers together. Ahead of them, Octavia, Raven, and Jasper were scream-singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Monty was filming it on his phone.

 

* * *

 

Raven sat shotgun. Jasper, Monty, and Bellamy were squeezed in the backseat. Octavia sat on Bellamy’s lap, behind Clarke, and directed her to their house. Clarke was surprised when they arrived; Bellamy lived a little ways out of town in a rented colonial that had obviously seen better days. At Clarke’s surprise, Octavia said, “It looked worse before we moved in. Bellamy’s done a lot of work on it.”

“Shush,” Bellamy said. “Don’t tell secrets.”

“It’s not a secret you’re good at stuff.”

They climbed out of the car and into the house. Clarke continued being surprised. It didn’t look like two students lived there. The place was well furnished and decorated, clean. Framed pictures hung on the far wall around a tacky Live, Laugh, Love sign that Clarke assumed was Octavia’s doing. Clarke immediately went to the picture wall to inspect it: Octavia’s senior photo, a candid picture of their mother with what looked like a twelve-year-old Bellamy and four-year-old Octavia on either side of her, slightly younger Bellamy holding baby Octavia, a few others in a similar vein.

But no teenage Bellamy, she noticed. No senior portrait. Nothing post-puberty.

She was interrupted by a beer being shoved in her hand. She looked up and Bellamy was grinning at her. A ruckus was coming from the kitchen. It sounded like Jasper had started some kind of drunken debate. The smell of popcorn flooded the air.

“C’mon,” he said, “I think we’re gonna watch _Halloween.”_

She took the beer from him. “I hate scary movies.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”

She shoved his arm and he caught it and pulled her closer.

“I like it when you’re drunk,” she said.

“Yeah? Why’s that?” His thumb skated over her wrist.

Before she could answer, a conga line of drunkards came out of the kitchen. Clarke took a step back. Octavia jumped on the couch and turned on the TV. Raven walked past carrying a popcorn bowl on her head. Jasper had a bag of chips and a six-pack of beer clutched to his chest. Monty gave Bellamy an apologetic glance on Jasper’s behalf.

“Guess the movie’s starting,” Bellamy said.

They got settled in and turned off the lights. Octavia occupied one end of the couch, Clarke the other, and Bellamy sat in the middle. Jasper and Monty were on the floor. Raven lay on her stomach with a throw pillow under her chin.

It took about forty minutes for all of them to fall asleep.

Clarke woke up to Bellamy squeezing her knee. The movie was almost over. She’d fallen asleep on Bellamy’s shoulder. When she looked at him, he nodded toward the other room. Quietly, she followed him out of the living room, down a hallway, and into his bedroom.

She entered and he closed the door silently behind her.

His room was spotless: bed made, clothes put away. A desk sat in the corner with a green Smith-Corona typewriter and a neat stack of typed pages beside it. Instead of side tables, he had two wooden crates.

He fell on the bed and threw his arm over his eyes.

“Still drunk?” Clarke asked.

“Yep.”

“Want a glass of water?”

“I’m alright.”

Clarke kicked off her shoes and threw her jacket over the desk chair, then lay down beside him.

He turned on his side to face her. “Is this something friends do?”

“It can be.”

He reached out to swipe a lock of hair from her forehead and tuck it behind her ear.

“I love you,” he said.

Before Clarke could even begin to wrap her mind around those words, he added, “As a friend, I mean. Friends can say that, right?”

Her impending heart attack abated. “Yeah, they can say that.” She shifted closer to him, until her head was tucked under his chin. He wrapped an arm around her. She slid her leg over his hip, and he slotted his knee between her thighs.

“I love you, too,” she said.


	4. Chapter 4

The morning of November first found Clarke curled in bed with Bellamy, who was the big spoon, breathing deeply against her shoulder. She looked around his room now that she could see it better. Sunlight fell through a crack in his curtains. A picture of Octavia and his mother sat in a frame beside an alarm clock on one of the crates. It was almost ten a.m.

“Bell?” she whispered.

He groaned a little and shifted against her. His wrist grazed her breast and he pressed his mouth to the crook of her neck. She swallowed thickly and ignored her own arousal. What would he do if she ground back against him? If she slid her jeans down to her thighs, put his hand on her breast? Would he fuck her? If they fucked, would they talk about it? Would anything change?

Bellamy rolled away from her and Clarke breathed a sigh of relief that may have also been a sigh of frustration.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Morning,” he muttered.

“Hungover?”

He groaned again in response. “I hate being thirty.”

“You’re not thirty.”

“Closer than you are, Princess.”

Clarke sat up and straightened her bra. She ran a hand through her hair and tossed it in a ponytail.

“I’m going to get us breakfast. What do you want?”

“Bacon,” he said. “Just. A lot of bacon.”

She twisted around to lean down and lay a kiss on his temple.

“Do friends do that?” he asked.

“They do now.”

In the living room, Monty, Jasper, and Octavia had made a cuddle pile in some blankets on the floor. Raven was asleep on the couch. Clarke tapped her ankle to wake her up. She stirred and opened her eyes.

“Breakfast,” Clarke whispered.

 

* * *

 

In the car, Raven played with the stereo and asked, “So how was it?”

“How was what?”

“The sex.”

“We didn’t have sex.”

“You’re telling me you slept in Bellamy Blake’s bedroom and didn’t have sex.”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“Bullshit.”

“Fully clothed. No kissing or anything.”

“You had the chance to ride that dick to dawn and you didn’t take it. I can’t believe you.”

“We’re just friends.”

“I’ve known that guy over a year. He doesn’t have friends. He doesn’t even smile at people. And within a couple months of knowing you, he’s getting drunk with us and dragging us to his house for a slumber party.”

“I guess I just have that effect on people.”

“Jesus.”

They went to a diner and bought nearly fifty dollars worth of breakfast food. They sat in a booth while they waited with styrofoam cups of coffee, and Raven said, “You know you’re not just friends, right?”

“What?”

“You and Bellamy. Like, you’re into each other. It’s pretty obvious.”

“Not true.”

“You spent the night with him.”

“Are you telling me you wouldn’t spend the night with me in my bed totally platonically?”

“Of course I would, but—”

“See? If I can do it with you, I can do it with him. Just because he’s a dude doesn’t make it any different.”

“That’s true in theory but not application. The guy wrote a damn story about you.”

“He did not.”

“Did too. Wanheda, commander of death? Blonde bombshell roaming the woods and killing everything in her path?”

“I’m neither a bombshell nor do I have a habit of killing things.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s about you, in an analogous kind of way. Plus at the reading he said it was inspired by a friend. He only has one friend.”

“I’m sure he has other friends,” Clarke said, but even as the words left her, she doubted them.

 

* * *

 

Clarke stormed out of the English department building toward the parking lot. It was the first really cold day of the year. She’d woken up to ice on her windshield that she had to scrape off and which made her late for class. She pulled up Bellamy’s number on her phone and hit Send.

He picked up after the second ring. “Hello?”

“Are we at the point where I can call you and complain about stuff?”

“That seems like best-friend territory.”

“Then I’m offering you a promotion.”

“I don’t know, seems like a lot of responsibility. I might have to think about it and get back to you.”

She tried not to pitch her voice into a whine, but it was ineffective. "Bell." Now at her car, she slid into the driver’s seat, but didn’t put her keys in the ignition.

“Okay, okay. What’s wrong?”

“I was late to class this morning, and only ten students showed up anyway, and no one participated at all. No one did the reading, either. I’m a shitty teacher.”

“You’re just new at it. You’ve spent four years being a student and now the roles are reversed.”

“That’s another problem. I’m barely older than them. They have no respect for me at all.”

“Respect comes when you don’t demand it.”

“I don’t think I demand it.”

“But they can smell when you’re self-conscious about it. Think about your favorite professors. What’d they have in common?”

“Passion for their subject, for teaching. And I guess—they were comfortable in their own skin? They weren’t just cardboard at the front of the classroom.”

“Exactly. It’s one of those finger trap things. The more defensive you are, the more defensive they get, and then the class just turns into a bunch of people walled off from each other. You have to create a community, and to do that you need to be part of the community.”

“Big words from a guy who avoids his own cohort.” She let out a long sigh. “After class, I went to Jaha’s office and he listened to me mope for a while and he recommended I sit in on someone’s class. So…” She traced her finger over the Honda logo on her steering wheel. “Can I come observe your class?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Did you have this much trouble when you started teaching?”

“You have no idea. I hadn’t been in a classroom since middle school, and all of a sudden I was running one.”

She remembered the photo wall in his house and the lack of teenage photographs.

“What happened in high school?” she asked. Her pulse rattled in her throat, and she immediately regretted asking.

The line crackled. In the background, music rang softly.

“We’re best friends now,” she said. “You can tell me.”

Another long pause. Finally he said, “I got arrested when I was fourteen for shooting a cop.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“He didn’t die.”

“That’s—good. I guess.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“If you see me differently now.”

“No, no. Of course I don’t.”

“Sure.”

“Bell—”

“It’s okay. It’s fine. Look, I gotta go.”

“Bell, stop.”

He didn’t hang up, but he didn’t say anything, either.

“I love you,” she said.

He let the silence linger again. She thought he might not say it back, not remember having said it already.

“I love you, too.”

She let her head fall back onto the headrest and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. 

“Nothing you tell me is going to change how I see you," she said. "Unless, like, you eat your toenail clippings or something. That might be a deal-breaker.”

“I bite my fingernails. Does that count?”

“That’s acceptable. Cute, even.”

“No one’s ever called me cute.”

“They should. You’re adorable.”

“Stop it,” he said, but it sounded like he was smiling.

“I’ll see you in class tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. They said their goodbyes and hung up. Clarke continued sitting in her car, staring at the phone in her lap, processing what Bellamy had told her.

 

* * *

 

Clarke triple-checked the room number. She looked at her phone where Bellamy had sent her his class info. She looked at the number on the door. She looked toward the end of the hallway, where the building name was. It was the right place, yet music was blasting out of the room, a Violent Femmes song.

She opened the door. Bellamy was standing behind the computer station, logging on, bouncing his foot to the music. His students had already moved the desks into a circle and they were all chatting with one another. It felt weird to be in a noisy classroom. Clarke took a seat near the door, out of the circle. Bellamy looked up at her and smiled. On the projector was a slide that said MEME OF THE DAY and below it was a Spongebob screencap with the caption, _Existence is pain._ Clarke didn’t get it, but she wondered if there was maybe nothing to get.

At one p.m., Bellamy cut the music off. On cue, the students went silent, and Bellamy changed the slide. In red Chiller font, all caps, he’d titled the lesson FAKE NEWS. 

“Guys, this is my friend Clarke. She’s observing class today. Clarke, these are the guys.”

“Hi,” she said.

Bellamy started the class with an attendance question, which was, “What celebrity have you been told you look like?”

Clarke didn’t take attendance in her class, let alone ask a daily question to take it. That was probably her first mistake.

As Bellamy called on people, he did Google Image searches for the lesser-known celebrities, and had the rest of the class decide whether or not the student looked like said celebrity. After everyone had gone, he looked at Clarke and said, “What about you?”

“I get Reese Witherspoon a lot,” she said.

“What do we think?” he asked the class.

There was a resounding affirmative.

“And you?” Clarke asked.

“I’ve never been told I look like a celebrity.”

“Keanu Reeves,” she said.

Another resounding affirmative.

 _“My Own Private Idaho_ Keanu or _John Wick_ Keanu?”

“John Wick!” a student shouted.

“I would definitely go on a killing spree if someone hurt my dog.” He gestured to the slide and said, “So who can tell me what fake news is and why it sucks?”

The class progressed. Clarke couldn’t believe it—teacher Bellamy was so much different than regular Bellamy. Teacher Bellamy talked a lot, and loudly, and with an air of performance. He made his students laugh. He walked around the room and they watched him as he moved. No one was on Facebook, or texting, or zoned out. He made notes on the board during discussion and his handwriting was actually legible. He never lectured, only asked questions and reiterated the answers. Clarke drew tallies in the corner of her notebook to count how many students participated, and after half an hour, eighteen out of twenty-two of them had raised their hand at least once.

He changed the slide, which now described an activity in which students had to identify fake news articles. They grouped up and he turned the music back on while they worked. Then he went around to each group and talked to them.

Clarke was awed by it. Bellamy was a good teacher. No, a _great_ teacher.

She pulled up his Rate My Professor page and found that he had a 5.0 across the board and several chili peppers. Of course he had chili peppers. Clarke didn’t think she would never get a chili pepper.

After he’d made his rounds, he slid into the seat next to her and said, “Going okay so far?”

She stared at him. “This is insane.” She showed him her tally marks. “You’ve had nearly a hundred percent participation.”

“Great group this semester. I lucked out.”

“It's not them, it’s you.”

“I don’t know. I think the time of day has a lot to do with it.”

After the activity, Bellamy had everyone go around and report their findings. Whenever they identified fake news, they’d chant, “Fake news, fake news, fake news,” and if they got it right, he threw a fun-size candy bar at them.

By the time class ended, Clarke had realized three things:

  1. She didn’t know as much about fake news as she thought she did,
  2. She definitely didn’t know that English comp could be so fun, and
  3. She was in love with Bellamy Blake.



A handful of students lingered after class to talk to him. The banter with them seemed easier than whenever he talked to people in the cohort—he smiled, and laughed, and generally seemed like an amiable guy, completely unlike the closed-off MFA ghost she once knew. They weren’t telling him anything class-related, or asking him questions, but talking about themselves, their lives. Sharing pieces of themselves with him, just because they wanted to.

They even followed him out of the classroom and down the hallway, Clarke trailing behind until the students finally went down the stairwell and Bellamy pivoted toward his office, telling them he’d see them Thursday and to remember to do the reading.

Alone now, she said, “Is class always like that?”

“Like what?”

“A party followed by a bunch of groupies fawning all over you.”

“Kinda?"

“They love you.”

“I doubt that. It’s just an easy A.”

“I’ve never had a student stay after class to talk to me. I’ve never been able to make them laugh. I’ve never had full participation.”

He shrugged. “Takes practice, that’s all. You pick things up.”

“No, Bell—” She grabbed his bicep so he’d stop walking. It was enormous in her grip, and  _hard_ and she had to let go immediately. “You’re amazing. Like, this is your calling. You’re a teacher.”

He gave her an amused smile like he didn’t believe her. “I thought I was a writer.”

“You can be two things. No one writes full-time anyway.”

“I’m a construction worker, Clarke. Guys like me are just bodies.”

Clarke took a step back as if she’d been struck. It sliced something inside of her to hear those words from him, for him to reduce himself to such a thing.

“You can’t see yourself at all, can you?” she asked.

“I see myself more clearly than anyone else. This?” He gestured around the hallway, where English faculty doors were peppered between bulletin boards listing readings and events on campus, advertising majors and minors, study abroad trips. “It’s temporary. It’s a farce. You might think I belong here, but I don’t.”

“You think I don’t feel the same way sometimes? I’ve written two English papers in my life and I got a C on one of them. Now I have to teach other people how to do something I have no idea how to do myself. I didn’t know how to pronounce the word ‘rhetoric’ until I got here, and now I have to teach that too. My students are wasting their tuition dollars on me. I had to read three hundred pages of Foucault and it went right over my head. I write kid stories and some days I feel like you’re the only one who takes me seriously. I don’t even have enough life experience to _be_ a writer. I’m an infant compared to everyone else here.”

“No, you’re not. You’re the best writer in the whole damn program and if people can’t see that, it’s their problem.”

“That title goes to you.”

“I’m not getting into this with you.”

“Then don’t.” Clarke checked the time on her phone. “Look, I have to get to seminar, but we’re not done with this conversation.”

She reached up and hugged him. He held her to him and they stood there for a long moment, longer than any normal hug should be, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go. Finally he did, and she stepped back, and opened her mouth like she was about to tell him, right there, that she was in love with him, but instead she said, “I forgot to tell you. Raven and I are hosting Thanksgiving. You and Octavia are invited.”

“I’ll think about it.”

He would be there, she knew. He just refused to commit. 

“I’ll text you details later,” she said, and rushed off to class.


	5. Chapter 5

The reading party Clarke had mentioned in her crit letter happened spontaneously. Well, sort of. She cornered Bellamy after workshop and said, “Want to grab dinner?”

“I shouldn’t,” he said. They were the last ones left in the room and Clarke was standing in the doorway. Bellamy had his usual clipboard and water bottle in hand, pen over his ear, just like when they first met, but now it was a couple months later and they were _best friends_ and it was _awesome._

Except it also wasn’t, because she was in love with him, and that was becoming very inconvenient, mostly because she wanted to make out with him all the time.

“Why not?”

“Have to get some writing done.”

“Me too,” she said, but she didn’t move or follow it up with anything.

“So...you should do that.”

“Why don’t we do it together?”

“I’m really more of an alone-time kind of writer.”

“I’ll be quiet.”

“You don’t know how to be quiet.” He tried to shoulder past her out the door, but she stepped to the side and blocked him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Being charming.”

“Obnoxious.”

“You like it when I’m obnoxious. That’s why we’re best friends.”

“I like it when I get work done, and I don’t like it when people stop me from doing that work.”

She pouted.

“Don’t do that,” he said.

It was working. She pouted harder.

“Stop it.”

She stepped closer to him, into his space. He didn’t step back, just looked down at her and pursed his lips.

“I’ll let you read the rest of _The Ark_ ,” she said.

His face lit up, eyes wide; her stomach flipped at his sudden excitement. “Really?”

“Yep. All the way to chapter ten.”

“Okay. My house. You’re picking up dinner, though.”

 

* * *

 

Half an hour later found them in Bellamy’s living room. Octavia was apparently at volleyball practice. When Clarke sat down on the couch with a plate of lo mein, Bellamy said, “Send it to me.”

“What, you don’t want to talk while we eat?”

“No talk, only read.”

So she pulled out her phone and shared the doc with him. He got out his own phone, clicked around, and a moment later a printer was going off somewhere in the house.

“You’re _printing it_? It’s a hundred pages.”

“I prefer reading stuff on paper. Studies show that reading on screens—”

“Lowers your comprehension, strains your eyes, and eBooks are ruining the publishing industry. You told me.”

“They _are_.”

“Have you ever thought that maybe the publishing industry needs ruining? Dismantle the gatekeeping, for-profit storytelling that comes with physical paper?”

He frowned. “No.”

“Seems counterintuitive for a guy who’s not rich, traditionally educated, or white.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again as if to mentally counter his own point. The printer stopped and he left to check it.

He came back a couple minutes later with a stack of paper in hand, and Clarke asked, “What about me? Don’t I get to read your stuff now?”

“Why would you want to?”

“Because it’s good and I like it. And you.”

She could see a bit of red seep into the tops of his cheeks. “Only if you rip them apart.”

“I’ll do my best, but you’re working at a higher level than I am, so I’m not sure how much help I can be.”

“Don’t even start with that crap.”

“What? It’s true.”

“It is not true. Your command of voice is unparalleled.”

“Yeah, well, your imagery is beautiful.”

“Your characters are complex and well-developed.”

“Your pacing is immaculate.”

“Your—”

“Okay,” Clarke said, “we gotta stop before this gets out of control.”

Bellamy rifled through his messenger bag and pulled out a tattered, overstuffed manila folder. He handed it to her. “That’s everything I’ve workshopped so far. You should start with the bottom story. It’s about Octavia, sort of.”

Clarke pulled it out. It was the original typewritten manuscript with Bellamy’s markings all over it. The title “Untitled” had been scratched out and a handwritten “Girl Under the Floor” replaced it.

They read and ate in silence, Clarke looking up whenever she’d see Bellamy make a mark on her draft or flip a page over. She tried not to use the time to stare at his profile, rigid in concentration; a lock of hair falling over his brow; the scar over his upper lip. And god, the freckles. She could read them just as intensely as she read his words, and for just as long. She wondered what he’d do if she leaned over and kissed him, the corner of his mouth, over the scar. If he’d kiss her back, or push her away and remind her they were just friends. If it would ruin the tenuous bond she’d worked so hard to establish, make him run away like a spooked deer. She didn’t let herself think about what would happen if he were just as enamored, if he wanted this as much as she did.

She turned her attention back to the story. His writing had improved tremendously from when he first started, a testament to the amount of work he’d put in over the past year and a half. His sentences used to be looser, filled with clauses and mundane visuals, but the seeds of promise were all there: offbeat, absurd conceits paired with vivid description and an agonizing amount of sincerity.

“Girl Under the Floor” was short, just eight pages. Like the title indicated, it was about a girl who spent sixteen years under the floorboards of a house. Like Wanheda, the reader didn’t know if the girl was a human in a bad situation, or supernaturally other in some way. Like Wanheda may have been the true commander of death, the girl might have been a ghost, and the ending gave no indication the truth. As if truth itself didn’t matter.

When she finished, she asked, “What does this have to do with Octavia?”

Bellamy was still staring down at Clarke’s manuscript, like he hadn’t heard, his chicken fried rice getting cold. She had only seen him take a couple bites.

“Bell,” Clarke said. Nothing. She shoved at his shoulder and he finally looked at her.

“What? I’m reading.”

“You’re really into that.”

“Obviously.”

Clarke ignored the fluttering of her heart and held up his story. “What’s this got to do with your sister?”

"It’s hard to explain.”

“Try.”

He let out a long exhale and ran a hand through his hair. “So, my mom kept a lock-down on O most of her life. Homeschooled, never got to leave the house, and the few times she did, she wasn’t allowed out of my sight.”

“And she didn’t do the same with you?”

“It was my fault she did it. I got picked on a lot, got into a lot of fights. Octavia was just like me—would’ve fought the moon if she could. But she had asthma, and when she was a kid she had a bad attack while she was playing outside, and I had snuck next door to play a video game at a friend's house. We almost lost her. After that, my mom went off the deep end.”

“And that’s why you’re so protective.”

“I guess.”

“Does Octavia know you wrote this about her?”

“No. She’ll never see it.”

“What about when it gets published?”

Bellamy gave her a look. “It’s never getting published.”

“But it’s good.”

“Not good enough.”

She didn’t feel like having this fight with him, so she asked, “What should I read next?”

“‘Mountain Men’,” he said. “Should be next in the pile.”

So Clarke pulled out the story and continued reading.

 

* * *

 

Some of the cohort went home for Thanksgiving, but a handful stayed in town. Raven set up a line of folding tables in her apartment with dollar-store vinyl tablecloths over top of them. They stole folding chairs from the department. She set up a bucket to deep-fry the turkey in the parking lot out back and wore a welding mask while she did it, with all the confidence that Alton Brown’s tutorial had imbued in her. Clarke remained at a safe distance and recorded the whole thing.

Jasper and Monty showed up around four with a crate of wine and a single can of cranberry sauce. Lexa showed up next with a vegan sweet potato dish. Murphy came with his girlfriend Emori and brought some rolls she had made. Nate brought a twelve-pack of beer. Bellamy and Octavia were the last to arrive. They had a homely-looking pumpkin pie, a slightly better-looking pecan pie, and a bucket of Cool Whip.

“Bellamy made them,” Octavia told Clarke conspiratorially in the kitchen. “He’ll say it was just the recipe on the back of the pumpkin can, but he pureed the pumpkin himself. Like, from an actual pumpkin. And he made the crusts, too. He likes baking, but don’t tell anyone I told you.”

“I’ll take it to the grave,” Clarke said.

They ate on styrofoam plates and drank wine from plastic cups. The music was a little too loud but Raven’s entire apartment building had vanished for break. Lexa got into a heated discussion with Murphy and Emori about the validity of beat poetry, and Nate, Raven, and Monty talked about the best ways to foster inclusivity in creative writing classes. Jasper was showing Octavia something on his phone.

Under the table, Bellamy reached down and squeezed Clarke’s knee. She looked down and his palm was facing up, so she threaded their fingers together.

“Thanks for inviting us,” he said. His cheeks had turned pink from the wine and heat in the apartment.

“I’m glad you came.”

Dessert was served. Bellamy’s pies were a hit and both were completely devoured, though the conversation had derailed into a table-wide discussion of colonialism and how Thanksgiving was a bullshit holiday, no one pointing out that they were still, in fact, celebrating it. After the dishes were cleared away, Lexa had the idea to do an impromptu reading, so they all took turns standing at the head of the table and reading from their phones. Octavia even read a poem from a creative writing class she’d taken last semester. When she was done, Clarke asked Bellamy quietly, “How much of a hand did you have in that?”

Bellamy whispered back, “All but one line.”

By nine, the tables had been folded and put away, and the music got louder and several of them were very drunk. Octavia had started a tickle fight with Monty which turned into a weird kind of wrestling match with Jasper, while Murphy played referee on his hands and knees, declaring points and fouls. Nate and Lexa were continuing the colonialism discussion. Clarke had lost track of everyone else, who may have been in the kitchen. She was sitting with Bellamy on the couch, pressed right up against his side even though she had plenty of room.

She finished her glass of wine, maybe her fourth, and was drunker than she had intended to get, which was good because she and Bellamy were both drunk at the same time for the first time, but also bad because _she and Bellamy were both drunk at the same time for the first time._

She found herself whispering in his ear, “Wanna go for a smoke?” but she leaned too close and ended up grazing the shell of his ear with her lips. She felt him shiver, and wanted to do it again.

He nodded.

She followed him outside and around the back of the building, where the turkey fryer hadn’t yet been cleaned up and the only cars were the ones brought by their friends. The building kept the wind from bombarding them, but it was still freezing, and Clarke wrapped her jacket more tightly around her. Instead of giving her a cigarette, Bellamy lit one and shared it with her.

“I’m...really drunk,” she said, handing it back, realizing only a moment later how stupid she sounded.

“Me too.”

“And I’m cold.”

“Me too.”

So she stepped closer to him, until her forehead was pressed against his chest, and without prompting, he wrapped an arm around her.

“You’re always so warm,” she said. “I want to do this all the time.”

A pause. “Me too.”

She looked up at him. “Really?”

“Really.”

She smiled a stupid drunken giddy smile and said, “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” he said easily, and he was grinning at her like she was really being charming instead of obnoxious.

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“I’ll never get tired of hearing that.”

“I’ll never get tired of saying it.”

“Tell me how much you love me.”

She kept thinking at some point she’d cross a line, that he’d make her stop, pull back. Instead, he said, “More than I’ve ever loved anyone not related to me.”

“I feel like we’ve known each other forever.”

“Me too.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Tell me something else.”

A long pause. “I want to kiss you.”

Her heart pounded against her ribs. “Is that something friends do?”

“No.”

He leaned down and pressed his lips against hers, gently at first, until she reached up to run her fingers through his hair and open her mouth to him. He bit at her lower lip, flicked the cigarette away, and pressed her against the wall. It took the breath out of her, which she only caught again when he trailed kisses down her throat, bit roughly at the juncture of her neck. She let out a moan that would have been heard by the first-floor inhabitants, were anyone in them.

He kissed the way he wrote—with urgency and precision. His hands burned as he ran them up her back, under her jacket and shirt. She felt like she’d waited years for this, for him.

“Say it again,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, ragged.

“I love you,” he muttered against her throat.

“I love you, too,” she said, not caring how dumb it sounded, how it didn’t actually describe this feeling at all but these were the words that held the closest approximation. It would take a novel to fully relay this feeling, and even then, it would only be a simulacrum, symbols on a page that bore a meager resemblance to the real thing.

Part of her knew this could just be a bad drunk decision, and tomorrow they’d pretend it never happened, a brief lapse of judgment that didn’t need discussed or acknowledged. But for now she focused on the taste of his lips, thick hair through her fingers, rough hands clutching her back. It might be temporary, but it was hers.

He broke the kiss and pressed their foreheads together, breathless. His eyes were closed.

“I’m writing something for you,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you in case it didn’t work out, but—I think it will. And I hope it doesn’t change things. Between us, I mean.”

“It won’t.”

“It might.” He kissed her again, sweet, lingering. He nuzzled her neck, bit her earlobe, and said, “I want to be inside you.”

“We can’t,” she said, though she could feel herself soaking through her jeans, his erection pressing into her hip.

“I know.”

“You’re torturing me.”

“Wanna do that too.”

“Fuck,” Clarke said, and was considering just dropping her jeans and facing the wall, cold be damned, when she heard the crunch of footsteps approach.

Bellamy barely had time to pull away before Raven was turning the corner, box in hand to collect the turkey fryer materials.

“Whoa,” she said. “What did I just walk in on?”

Bellamy cleared his throat and told Clarke, “I’ll see you inside.” He adjusted himself subtly, then ducked his head and left around the opposite side of the building.

By the light of the streetlamp, Raven inspected Clarke and said, “I thought hickeys were for undergrads.”

“We’re drunk. Things happen.” Clarke hoped Raven couldn’t see the rapid flush that covered her face and chest.

“They sure do. But what happens after?” Raven knelt down to toss the welding mask and gloves into the box.

“Guess we’ll see.”

“This isn’t going to end well.”

“I know,” Clarke said, but only the sober part of her believed it. The drunk part wanted to be fucked sideways while she recited Byron. The drunk part was ready to propose. The drunk part—and the writer part, the one who wrote happy endings because she knew reality didn’t cater to them—wanted her happily ever after.

“I thought you wanted me to fuck him,” she added.

“Fuck him, yeah. Fall for him, no.” She stood back up and looked at Clarke. “Look, Clarke, Bellamy’s got baggage. The package might be nice, but inside is a mess.”

She could feel her hands trembling so she balled them into fists in her pockets. “I think I know him better than you do.”

“Do you?” Raven asked. “Do you really? Or is he just a guy whose writing you jive with?”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yeah, there is.” She nodded toward the bucket. “Grab that and let’s go inside.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke woke up on Raven’s couch the next morning. Everyone had gone home. Octavia had driven Bellamy. Emori and Nate had taken everyone else. A headache pounded at Clarke’s temples and she felt like she’d swallowed a bucket of sand. Wine hangovers were the worst.

In the bathroom, she inspected herself in the light of day—the hickey situation was worse than she thought. Her lower lip was bruised. The sight of it, the memory of it, made something pulse between her legs. If Bellamy were here, she could imagine crawling over his hips and letting him fuck the hangover out of her.

She checked her phone—no text from him, not that it surprised her. He never texted first. She wanted to reach out and ask how he was feeling, weasel her way into getting breakfast with him, but a voice in her head that sounded a lot like Raven held her back.

A drunk mistake, she thought. Writers got dramatic when they were drunk. Emotional. They said things they didn’t mean. Maybe Raven was right, and Clarke didn’t know Bellamy as well as she thought. Maybe she wasn’t thinking this through. He shot a cop, spent most of his teenage years in jail. He didn’t make friends easily, or at all. His sister would always be his highest priority.

Pretty package. A mess inside. Maybe Clarke was only in love with the wrapping. 

There was a difference, she realized now, between the writing and the writer.

She left before Raven woke up.

 

* * *

 

Radio silence all day Friday. Again on Saturday. She didn’t have the guts to text him. No word from Raven, either. It was a testament to how much time she spent socializing that she managed to get caught up on grading, ahead on reading for seminar, write an entire chapter of _The Ark,_ and start a graphic novel she wouldn’t have time to continue.

Sunday afternoon she texted him: _We should probably talk about this._

He took longer to check the text and reply than normal, twenty whole minutes.

_Yeah. Meet you at the coffeehouse at 3?_

_Sure_

For the first time since she'd known him, he had arrived first. He was wearing his leather jacket and sitting on an armchair reading a book— _Plainsong,_ Kent Haruf. She sat in the armchair across.

He closed his book and rested it in his lap and looked at her. “I don’t know how to start this conversation.”

“Okay, well, let’s workshop it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. What happened is the thing being workshopped, so we’ll summarize, compliment, criticize, and discuss next steps, okay?”

“You’re ridiculous,” he said, but he was almost smiling, which she took as a win.

“I’ll introduce the piece.” She sat straighter in the chair and cleared her throat. “On Thursday we got drunk and made out, after several months of establishing a connection, which we described as friendship but seems to have moved elsewhere. Raven caught us and we haven’t really spoken since. Am I missing anything?”

“That about covers it.”

“Would you like to begin with what you think is working in the piece?”

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this.”

With her best Marcus impression, she said, “There’s something of value to find in everything, Bellamy.”

Bellamy pinched the bridge of his nose. “The making out was—good. Great, even.”

“Can you elaborate? What did you find compelling about the making out?”

“Jesus, Clarke.” He sighed, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “You taste good and you feel good and you make these little noises…” He leaned back and ran a palm over his face. “Fuck. Just—your turn.”

“I found your biting-to-kissing ratio particularly effective. Pillow talk on point. Panties totally ruined. And it goes without saying but I really, stupidly love you, and no matter what we decide today, my feelings aren’t going away.”

He clenched his jaw and looked away. A foreboding feeling came over her, but she continued anyway.

“Okay, let’s move on to criticisms. I’ll go first. You were very gentle, which was definitely the right call since we hadn’t discussed it, but I like it rough. Biting, hair-pulling, choking, it’s all good.”

“You’re killing me.”

“Your turn.”

“I don’t have any criticisms.”

“So we can move on to questions. I’ll start with the obvious one: what happens next?”

He steadied a long look at her. “It can’t happen again.”

Clarke’s expression faltered. “Why not?”

“We’re friends, Clarke. We’re just friends.”

She looked down at her knees, where a hole was opening in her jeans and she pushed at it with a fingertip, ignoring the burning feeling behind her eyes.

“Okay,” Bellamy continued. “For one, you’re not going to want anything to do with me when you find out where I’ve been and what I’ve done.”

“Not true.”

“We barely know each other, Clarke. We have chemistry. We like each other’s writing. That’s all we’ve got.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Not when one of us spent five years in prison for attempted homicide.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“You should. It’s part of who I am. All I’ve ever known is taking care of O and being locked up. And when your entire life is spent revolving around one person and one event, you don’t have a lot left to build a personality with.”

“You have a personality.”

“I really don't. I have boring stories that’ll never see the light of day.”

“Bell—”

“I’m sorry I let this happen.”

Clarke didn’t know what to say to that. If she kept arguing, he would only continue shutting down. She wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him until the world slipped away, like one of her characters might do, but this wasn’t a story, and she couldn’t silence Bellamy’s fears with a kiss. Instead, nausea started rising in her, and she wanted to run away, but forced herself to stay seated. Undergrad Clarke would have bolted, but grad Clarke could talk things through.

“And then there’s the more practical problem,” Bellamy said. “We’re coworkers, and you shouldn’t date your coworkers.”

“We grad students.”

“Who get paid to be here. We work together. We’re coworkers.”

“There’s nothing in the Student Handbook that says grad students can’t date each other.”

“Just because it won’t get us kicked out doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. You weren’t here last year. Lexa got into this weird BDSM thing with this poet Echo and it spiraled into drama that affected the entire department. People had to take sides. Jaha got involved. It was a mess.”

“We’re not going to get into a weird BDSM thing. Unless, like, you’re into that. Which, I mean, we could talk about it. I wouldn’t say no, is what I’m saying.”

“I’m serious, Clarke. We’re here to write. Anything else is just rocking the boat.”

“One, cliche. Two, why can’t we rock the boat?”

“Because we have to see each other every week. Pass each other in the halls. Read and critique each other’s work. We have a community here—”

“Oh, come on, you’re barely part of the community.”

She didn’t know why she said it. It just slipped out. Her breath stopped in her throat.

He looked away and his expression fell. “I’m trying. I’m really trying.”

“I’m sorry. I know you are. I know it’s tough for you.” She paused while she waited for him to continue, but he didn’t, so she said, “Can we just be solution-oriented for a sec? This isn’t all doom and gloom. We don’t have to be dramatic about it.”

He leveled a glare at her. “I’m not being dramatic.”

“You are literally the most dramatic person I’ve ever known. Besides Lexa, maybe. What I mean is, even if we never touch each other again, which is fine, we still have this bomb-ass friendship, and we’re still each other’s ideal reader. Even if you don’t think that’s enough to launch a relationship, it’s at least enough to hang out sometimes, right? Get coffee, talk shop?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“So let’s be septuagenarians about this.”

He gave her an amused look, which made some of the tension seep from her shoulders.

“We’ll pump the brakes on whatever happened on Thanksgiving,” Clarke said, “and focus on our work, and learning how to be each other’s friend—”

“Best friend,” he said. “I liked that.”

“Okay, best friend. Writing buddies. Occasional hiking partners.”

He nodded. “I can do that.”

“And I still love you, even if you don’t want me to say it anymore.”

“I do. We can keep that.”

“Okay, so hanging out, getting to know each other better. Does that sound good?”

“Yeah.”

“No touching—”

“Hugs are okay.”

“Okay, we can hug. We can hang out. We can text and talk on the phone.”

“Things best friends do.”

“Yeah,” Clarke said, and she was smiling even though something in her chest felt like it was ripping apart. “Things best friends do.”


	6. Chapter 6

December came, and with it, finals. Clarke found herself buried in research for her first seminar paper and drowning in grading. Bellamy didn’t seem to have her same struggles even though he was teaching two classes and taking a different seminar, and also workshop.

She was holding out for the piece he had said he was writing for her, but he hadn’t mentioned it since Thanksgiving, and the last piece he workshopped was an experimental story about nuclear fallout described like a sports commentary, and it was good, but it wasn’t “Wanheda.” It lacked heart, but Clarke couldn’t figure out how to say that in her crit letter without invalidating the entire work. She did, however, tease him about being derivative of Saunders.

They fell into a routine: dinner after workshop, the coffeehouse Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, the library almost every evening. They didn’t talk much about anything other than writing, which didn’t bother her because she could talk about writing forever, but she found that despite the time she spent with him, she missed him. She was always reaching out to touch him but pulling back. Or meeting his gaze too meaningfully for too long and looking away. When he wasn’t looking, she stared at the bow of his lip, gentle slope of his throat, splashes of freckles across his cheeks. She liked the little pout he made when he was focused on writing, the knit of his brow. She liked how he typed with three fingers (even though she made fun of him for it). She liked making him laugh, which she was good at now, because she knew his sense of humor, knew he liked it dry and deadpan and a little crass.

Jasper and Monty threw a party after finals week but before everyone went home for break. Bellamy came late, but he showed up, which was more than Clarke had been expecting. They were both careful not to drink too much, and as much as she tried to give him space, they didn’t leave each other’s sides. He’d stand a few inches too close to her, neither touching but warmth there regardless. Clarke curled her hand into her pocket to keep from wrapping an arm around him.

“Smoke?” Bellamy asked after a while. It was nearing midnight, and some people had gone home, but others were huddled on the couch watching _Predator_ for some reason, and some were in the kitchen talking about the hellish semester they’d just survived.

Clarke was surprised but said yes, heart thudding as she followed him into the cold. She wondered if he had forgotten this was how they’d gotten in trouble last time.

They stood at the side of the apartment building, where there was no awning, so snow clumps gathered in their hair and eyelashes. Bellamy gave her a cigarette and his lighter. He only seemed to smoke at parties and during workshop breaks. When it was just the two of them hanging out, he didn’t bother. Even though most of the time they spent together was silent, the silence that engulfed them now was insufferable. So Clarke asked, “Why do you only smoke sometimes?”

“Gives me an excuse to get some air. I don’t actually like it.”

“You don’t smoke when it’s just us.”

“I have all the air I need around you.”

She let the sentiment warm her while simultaneously wanting to punch him in his dumb face, but the silence that fell around them now was much less tense.

“Hey, so,” he began, and cleared his throat, looked down and ran his boot over the frozen grass. “Remember I told you Octavia was transferring after this semester?”

“Yeah,” Clarke said, and now her heart was trying to break out of her chest.

“I’m—I decided not to go with her.”

Clarke sank against the brick wall behind her. She didn’t want to admit how much she’d been thinking about it over the past couple months, had been too scared to ask for an update. “Oh thank god.”

He gave her a sidelong glance and a small smile. “Relieved?”

“You have no idea.”

“I figure it’s only a semester. She’s got a dorm lined up. We can see each other on weekends. It’ll be okay.”

She knew it took a lot for Bellamy to say these things, let alone believe them. “That’s good. I’m proud of you.”

He looked away. Rubbed the back of his neck. “And I was wondering if you’d want to move in.”

Before Clarke could reply, he added, “Rent’s dirt cheap and it’s better than the shit-hole you’re living in. No offense. And we can go in on groceries so we’re not eating out as much.”

“I’d love to,” Clarke said, which surprised her.

Bellamy looked at her, also surprised. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. We already hang out all the time anyway. And I hate my apartment.”

“Are you going home over break?” he asked.

She snorted. “What home?”

“You don’t spend Christmas with your family?”

“I was probably just going to order Chinese and work on _The Ark_.”

“I feel like there’s a story there.”

All this time and it never occurred to her to tell Bellamy about her relationship with her mom. “Not really. My mom and I don’t get along. She’s in LA. It’s not worth the airfare and time to fly all the way to California just to scream at each other for a few days. In January I’m going to visit my friend Wells for a couple weeks, though, so that’ll be fun.”

Bellamy nodded like he understood even without all the gritty details. “Want to come over for Christmas then? You can start bringing your stuff, too, if you want.”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’d be great.”

 

* * *

 

It was only much later—after the party had ended and Clarke made it home and into pajamas and settled into bed, after she’d sent Bellamy her nightly _home safe_ text and he’d sent her his _Goodnight, princess_ text, after she’d woken up to his _Morning_ text with a heart emoji and she wondered in a half-sleep how long they could keep this up—that she realized moving in with the guy she was in love with was a potentially disastrous idea.

She sat up in bed and texted, _Are you sure about this?_

_It’s before noon, so yes it is morning._

_Me moving in with you_

_Oh. Yeah I’m sure._ After a handful of seconds, he added, _Why? Changing your mind?_

_What if one of us decides to bring someone over?_

_You can have guests but we should probably talk if you want to throw a party or something._

_No I mean *guests*_

_Oh._

She hadn’t gotten laid in a long time, and being in close proximity of Bellamy constantly without being able to touch him drove her nuts. She tried to reason with herself that the only reason she hadn’t had sex was because she’d been too busy and didn’t know anyone outside of the department. She couldn’t join Tinder or Bumble because she didn’t want her students to find her, which pretty much left her unfuckable.

Moreover, she hadn’t even considered that Bellamy might be dating. She didn’t see herself as a jealous person, but the thought made her want to puke.

 _O and I have kind of an unspoken rule that we don’t bring hookups to the house,_ Bellamy said.

_Which means you have hookups outside the house._

_I don’t want to think about O’s hookups, ok._

_I’m not talking about O’s hookups._

_Are you asking me if I’m sleeping with anyone?_

_Maybe._ Clarke felt beyond petty, and knew she shouldn’t be having this conversation when she hadn’t had coffee yet, but now that she was on this train she wasn’t going to jump off.

She stared at her phone waiting for his reply, but no ellipses rose. After a minute she added, _We haven’t actually talked about this._

 _I know._ Then he added, _I don’t really want to._

_Why not?_

_Friends don’t talk about who they fuck._

_Best friends do_

_Well maybe we shouldn’t. We don’t have to tell each other everything._

_Okay,_ Clarke typed, and set her phone face-down so she wouldn’t look at it anymore.

 

* * *

 

“Why do you have so many books?” Bellamy asked. He was standing in the doorway of Clarke’s new bedroom eating a bowl of cereal. Shirtless. She hated him.

She’d begun bringing over a couple boxes at a time, shocked and disgusted by how much she’d accumulated in just one semester. Octavia hadn’t moved out yet, but she told Clarke to go ahead and start bringing things in, and cleared out a corner and some space in the closet.

“I’m a writer,” she said. “Writers have to read.”

“We have three libraries on campus. You don’t have to buy books.”

“What if I want to keep them for reference? What if I want to lend them out? What if I meet the author and want them to sign it? What if I get a book deal and expect people to buy my book? I’m paying it forward.”

“Do you at least have a bookshelf?”

She moved past him to go to her car and get another box. Her elbow brushed his stomach. This was what it would be like when she moved in: always looking, barely touching. “I don’t have any furniture. Just books and clothes.”

By the time she came back in, Bellamy had put on a shirt and was sitting on the couch with one of Clarke’s books in hand.

 

* * *

 

Clarke came over on Christmas Eve with a bag full of Chinese food and the _Die Hard_ Blu-Ray box set. Bellamy had baked Christmas cookies, and Octavia put up a tiny tree in the corner. They devoured the Chinese food by the time John McClane got ahold of a machine gun, and Octavia was asleep before Hans Gruber’s tragic demise. When the movie ended, she got up and rubbed her eyes and said, “I’m going to bed.” She was wearing an oversized ugly Christmas sweater with a cat on it. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Clarke said.

Octavia bent down and kissed Bellamy on the cheek.

“Goodnight,” he told her, and she was gone.

It was the first time Clarke and Bellamy had been alone—properly alone—since Halloween. Clarke hadn’t asked about staying the night, even though it was getting late and she’d be back the next morning. She assumed it wasn’t a big deal; she could sleep on the couch.

She had started leaning toward him sometime during _Die Hard 2._ He had his feet propped on the coffee table. Between them sat a plate of cookies that they were slowly making their way through.

Another half hour passed, then an hour. The cookies were gone and Clarke put the plate on the table. Before she could chicken out, she lay down with her head in his lap.

He froze and said, “Clarke,” as if to say, _We agreed._

“It’s Christmas” was all she said in response.

He sighed, then lowered his hand and ran his fingers through her hair.

During _Die Hard with a Vengeance,_ his hand had slipped down to her neck. He traced gentle shapes with his fingertips over her shoulder, arm, chest. She was sweltering under a blanket but didn’t dare move. His fingers on her skin ignited something in her, until finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. She took his hand and placed it on her breast. She was wearing a low-cut shirt, had wondered if he'd been looking down it.

She expected him to move his hand, but he didn’t. He paused for just a second before running his thumb in a circle around her nipple. Her breath caught. He slipped it down her shirt, skin on skin, and rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She swallowed, shifted onto her back so he’d have a better angle.

He did that for a while, skating his thumb back and forth, pinching lightly. She’d never considered her breasts particularly sensitive, but the idleness with which he teased her could have made her come. She didn’t moan. She couldn’t. Octavia was just on the other side of the wall.

He removed his hand from her breast and trailed it down her stomach, stopped at her hips, where he slipped his fingers under the waistband of her pajama bottoms. Then he stopped and pulled back, tracing more shapes, moving lightly, slowly.

Each time he dipped into her panties, he moved a little lower, and Clarke spread her legs in invitation. Her breath came a little quicker. His fingers finally grazed her slit but he pulled back again. She was near begging now. Almost grabbed his wrist and kept it there.

The next sweep of his fingers, he stayed. Ran the pad of his middle finger into her folds, slicked easily. He ran a slow circles over her clit. She was panting, gripping the blanket in her fists. He dipped a finger inside her, moved it in and out, circled her clit some more. Not fast enough to make her come, but lazily, as if they had all night. Which, she supposed, they did.

He pushed in a second finger, fucked her more quickly with them. Her hips moved in tandem with him, small thrusts to get him deeper inside of her. She wanted to throw the blanket off and yank off her pants and underwear, but held back—Octavia could wake up and get a glass of water. Or worse, Bellamy would come to his senses and tell her they had to stop.

Quick, steady movements against her clit now, and she could feel her orgasm building, feel the little, nearly soundless moans leave her throat. Her hand was on his wrist, her eyes closed, movie forgotten. She wanted to warn him but forgot how to speak; she came with her hand over her mouth to stifle a shout, pulsing around two of his fingers. She could feel herself soaking her own underwear and was grateful that she had already brought over a box of clothes.

He kept fingering her until she grew over-sensitive and her body twitched. He pulled his hand out of her pants. She risked a glance up at him; he was staring at the movie as if he were actually watching it, and he had sucked his fingers into his mouth.

Her body seemed to move of its own accord. Suddenly the blanket was on the floor and she was crawling over his lap. She met his eyes and they looked hungry, his cheeks flush, and she cupped his face in her hands and pressed her mouth against his. He tasted like her. She could feel his erection pressing onto her wet underwear, grinding against her spent clit which sent shocks of pleasure through her. He trailed his lips down her throat and chest and pulled the collar of her shirt aside, exposing her breast, sucked a nipple between his teeth.

She wanted to ask him to take this into the bedroom, but she already knew sex was out of the question, a silent line drawn between them. Surely, though, he’d let her reciprocate.

She slid down between his legs until her knees were on the carpet, and unbuttoned the fly of his jeans. She looked up at him. He was biting his lower lip, watching her, and carded his fingers through her hair. It was only when she pulled his cock out from the hole in his boxers that he said, “Clarke, you don’t—” but then she sucked him into her mouth and his head fell back.

He kept his hand on her head, gentle, and she put hers over top of his, squeezing, hoping he’d understand. He did. He gripped her hair and pulled, and she moaned quietly around him, head bobbing up and down. Taking her time.

He was as big as she hoped he’d be, great for fucking but less great for blowing. Her jaw was already getting tired, but she missed that feeling, the urgency, the sweet pain. He moved his other hand to her head and gripped more of her hair in his fists. She slowed until she wasn’t moving at all, a challenge, and he picked up on that too.

“Christ,” he said, and started moving her head for her, fucking up into her mouth until all she could do was hold on and push down her gag reflex. She wasn’t lying when she said she liked it rough. It was hard getting good guys to play along.

His movements stumbled; she could feel his cock harden and twitch on her tongue.

“Fuck, I’m—”

She gave a small nod. He stilled, pulsed, came. His come filled her mouth and she swallowed it, held his dick and licked him clean while he caught his breath. She pulled off and even tucked him back into his boxers with a little pat.

He surged forward and kissed her, pulled her back onto his lap. It was a sloppy, deep kiss, the kind from Thanksgiving. She couldn’t believe she’d lived without this for over a month.

“You’re perfect,” he muttered between bites of her throat. “So goddamn perfect.”

“I want to go to bed with you.”

In response, he picked up the remote and turned off the TV. “Hold on.”

He stood and Clarke went with him, arms and legs wrapped around him. He carried her to the bedroom where he dropped her onto the bed and kissed her again, slowly this time, parting only to pull his shirt over his head and return to her. He managed to kick his jeans and boxers off and slide under the covers with her, where she got undressed too, so they were naked together, bodies tangled, kissing and touching and almost all the things they’d disallowed themselves over the past month.

They kissed for so long that Clarke started to lose track of both time and consciousness. She thought she might have dozed off for a handful of seconds, and then it must have been for longer because Bellamy whispered, “Clarke,” and she opened her eyes to see him staring at her.

“Hm?” she asked.

He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Nothing.”

“You can say it.”

“I miss you.”

“I’m right here. We talk every day.”

“You know what I mean."

There was nothing to say to that, because it was true, so all she could do was make tonight last. She reached up and trailed a finger over the scar on his upper lip. The bridge of his nose. Another scar on his forehead. His chin. The curve of his lower lip. He closed his eyes and she traced his eyelid. Drawing him, in her head, so this could last.

 

* * *

 

Christmas morning found them naked and tangled together, Bellamy at her back, erection pressed against her ass like last time on Halloween. But this time she didn’t stop herself from pushing back against him, reveling in the low moan of his throat as he awoke, the press of his fingertips into her hip as he met her movements. She was still mostly asleep, refused to let herself think about what was happening.

His lips brushed her shoulder and his cock slipped between her legs, where she was still or maybe once again wet, the tip grazing her clit with each slow thrust. She gripped the sheet in her hand and clenched her thighs together, pitched her hips so the pressure on her clit was more insistent.

He reached around her and grabbed her breast in hand, tugged her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Clarke,” he said, and his voice dragged, so low it was barely audible, a rumble against her spine.

He moved faster and Clarke let out a groan. She wanted him inside her, knew they shouldn’t. Knew, more importantly, he wouldn’t. Her breath picked up speed, each exhale holding an insistent whine, orgasm churning low in her belly.

She clenched her thighs more tightly. He gripped her hips harder and fucked her thighs faster and bit into her shoulder so roughly she knew it’d leave a mark.

She cried out when she came, and Bellamy clapped a hand over her mouth which only made another wave crest over her, body shuddering, heaving breaths. Bellamy came a moment later, hot wetness flooding between her legs, slicking the friction as he continued rutting into her.

She could feel him soften and pushed back against him, unsatisfied. Empty. He picked up on it like he could read her mind, put his hand between her legs and pressed two fingers inside her. He wrapped his other hand around her throat and squeezed lightly, not enough to cut off her breath but enough that she could feel the strength of his grip. She rode his hand until she came a second time, this time silently, lip bitten between her teeth so tightly she tasted blood.

“Better?” he whispered as he removed his fingers.

She nodded.

He held her close to him, nibbled her earlobe, nuzzled her neck.

“We should probably get up,” he muttered.

But she didn’t want to, because then it would be over, and they wouldn’t talk about it. If they did, Bellamy would remind her they were coworkers, and now roommates, and most importantly friends. And she couldn’t handle that discussion a second time, couldn’t stand the thought of her heart wrenching apart again. 

This was just a Christmas exception. Tomorrow she’d be on the road to visit Wells, and when she came back, spring semester would begin, and everything would go back to normal.

“Are you guys done fucking?” Octavia said from the hallway. “I want to open my presents.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke spent New Years with Wells at his apartment in Philly. He noticed immediately that Clarke trained most of her attention on her phone, but it took him two days to finally ask, “Who are you talking to?”

“A friend,” she said. “He’s in my program.”

She and Wells spent their time the same way they had all through childhood: making fun of movies in their pajamas and throwing “I don’t know, you choose” back and forth about food options.

Wells made a noncommittal noise and let the subject drop.

Clarke was drunk on grocery store champagne at midnight on New Year’s. Bellamy texted, _Happy New Year_ with a string of heart emojis, followed a nervous moment later by, _Meeting you was the highlight of my year._

 _I’m drunk,_ she replied. _I’m going to say something I regret._

_Say it._

_If I were there, would you have kissed me at midnight?_

Wells had fallen asleep by eleven, which was an hour and a half past his usual bedtime, but she commended him for trying, and even more for staying on the couch with her, where he woke up and mumbled, “Happy New Year, Clarke,” before falling back asleep. _New Year’s Rockin’ Eve_ was on TV and Clarke was alone with their bottle of champagne.

 _Yeah, I would have._ A moment later, he added, _And I probably wouldn’t have stopped._

 

* * *

 

A few days later, Clarke was up late reading on Wells’ couch when her phone rang. She picked it up and saw Bellamy’s name. She looked at the clock on the DVR—almost three in the morning. He’d never called her before.

“Hello?”

“Clarke,” he said, and there was something in his voice that said he wasn’t okay.

She sat up straight. “Bell? Are you okay?”

“I’m—yeah, I guess. I mean, no. Not really. You?”

“I’m fine. Where are you?”

“Jersey. I just—” He stopped and took a breath like he was trying to compose himself. “I dropped O off at her dorm. I’m driving home now.”

“Oh. God. I’m sorry.” She knew it was coming, even though he hadn’t texted since yesterday. He sounded fine at the time, irritated that Octavia had saved all her packing for the last minute, that they’d be in a hurry on the drive. The usual stuff. Clarke didn’t think he’d be anything but fine on his way home, and she’d see him when she got back anyway, a few days from now.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“No—shit, sorry, are you asleep?”

“I was reading.”

“What’re you reading?”

Clarke settled back onto the couch, pushing down a reluctant smile. “You’re going to make fun of me if I tell you.”

“I won’t. Tell me.”

“You will. I know you. If it’s not some obscure author who won the PEN/Faulkner in 1985, it’s not worth my time.”

“Tobias Wolff is not obscure.”

“I can’t believe you know who won in ‘85.”

“The PEN/Faulkner’s only been around since ‘81. It’s not that hard to remember. The National Book Award, though…”

“I can’t believe I ever thought you were cool.”

“Just tell me what you’re reading.”

“V.C. Andrews.”

“Oh my god. _Flowers in the Attic_?”

“No, the Casteel series.”

“That’s like if you came home and found me reading, I don’t know, Ayn Rand or Bret Easton Ellis.”

“I would move out.”

They continued talking about books and writing and school and all the things they usually did, and Bellamy didn’t bring up Octavia again, and Clarke didn’t either. She got the impression he only need a distraction for the drive, so that was what she offered him, and she found herself lying at an awkward angle on the couch so her charger would reach, and dozing off periodically as the sun rose, until eventually she fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

Clarke arrived home a few days before the semester started. It was early—Bellamy was still asleep, so she quietly entered her room, now empty of all Octavia’s things. She set her suitcase on the bed, which was made, and when she turned around she noticed a giant bookshelf on the far wall, filled with all her books.

She approached it hesitantly, jaw hanging loose, ran her fingers over the spines. Alphabetical order by author. Occupying half of a shelf were her sketchbooks, journals, and art supplies. On the bottom were a few wicker pull-out drawers. This must have taken him forever, she thought. It looked nicer than something from IKEA, and it was new, not antique.

“Welcome home, Princess.”

She turned around. Bellamy was leaning against the doorframe, scratching his bare chest. His hair was wilder than usual, partially matted to the side of his head, some of it sticking up. He looked soft and sleepy and she’d never wanted to kiss him more.

Instead she hugged him, and buried her face in his neck, and said, “Thank you. I love it.”


	7. Chapter 7

Living with Bellamy Blake had its ups and downs.

The ups:

  1. He cooked all the time, and baked a lot, so there was always food to eat, which was much better than the way Clarke had been living (on pizza and takeout).
  2. He was shirtless. All the time.
  3. He whistled classic rock hits while he cleaned.
  4. He cleaned.
  5. Good internet connection.
  6. Clarke was falling more in love with him every day.



The downs:

  1. They still refused to talk about their relationship, or what had happened on Christmas.
  2. The typewriter. God, the typewriter. She thought it was just for the aesthetic, but no. He actually wrote on it. Constantly. She heard it clacking away repeatedly, a sound that seemed to echo through the house. There was no escape.
  3. He borrowed her books without asking. (Which was actually kinda cute, because he left Post-It notes in them, and at least he put them back when he was done, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t sneak them out again to see what he had marked.)
  4. At first he put her hair dryer away every morning to clear off bathroom counter space, which was super inconvenient to drag back out when she was in a hurry. But then he drilled a hanger-type thing into the wall for the dryer to rest on without having to be unplugged, so it became a moot point.
  5. They didn’t make as much of an effort to hang out anymore since they lived together, but Clarke secretly also thought he was maybe avoiding her so Christmas wouldn’t happen again, and their interactions had begun to feel more strained, but only when they were alone. In public, Bellamy was the same loving, antagonistic BFF she’d grown to love and appreciate. At home, he was closed off and spent most of his time in his room.
  6. Clarke was falling more in love with him every day.



“So what’s it like?” Raven asked. They were at the coffeehouse the Sunday before classes started, and Clarke was once more staring at a blank syllabus. Her first comp class had gone so poorly that she wanted to start from scratch, but had procrastinated until now, so she realized woefully that she’d have to do a repeat of last semester, and it would probably be shitty again.

“What’s what like?”

“Living with Bellamy.”

“Blackjack and hookers, nonstop.”

“I’m serious.”

Clarke leveled a glare at her. This, from the woman who told her Bellamy was just a pretty package and a mess inside. “It’s fine. It’s normal. We get along great.”

“How’s the sex?”

Clarke’s glare turned glarier. “There’s no sex.”

“Still? I’m getting blue balls just looking at you.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“What?”

“I tell you nothing happens, and you want something to happen. Then, something happens, and you tell me it shouldn’t.”

Raven pursed her lips and took a loud slurp of coffee. When she put her mug down, she said, “I don’t know. I’m—jealous isn’t the right word. Scared, I guess. I don’t want what happened with Lexa and Echo to happen to you guys. It nearly tore the cohort apart, and we’re finally in a good place again.” She pulled at the sleeve of her hoodie. “And yeah, I’m kind of jealous, but not in a normal way. Not like a would-rather-be-dating-him way. Just a friend way.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’ve known him twice as long as you have but know less than half as much about him. I want to be friends with him too, but he’s never even noticed me.”

“He notices you.”

“He just doesn’t talk to me.”

“He’s probably too nervous.”

“Why would he be nervous to talk to me and not you?”

“Because I bugged the shit out of him until he caved. If I hadn’t been blowing up his phone a dozen times a day, he would have never even seen me.” It wasn’t exactly true; she wouldn’t have been so forward with him if she weren’t confident he liked her. In what way, she didn’t know, but the respect was there, and the curiosity, so she had capitalized on it. “You’re used to people coming to you for friendship because you’re smart and beautiful and amazing.”

“Come on,” Raven said. “You forgot talented.”

“The rest of the world has to try a little harder to form relationships.”

She smiled at Raven, who smiled back, more shyly than normal. “Fine. I guess that makes sense.”

“Do you want to come over for dinner? Bellamy’s making bolognese.”

“He wouldn’t mind that?”

He would, she thought. He would definitely mind it.

“Not at all.”

 

* * *

 

While Raven was looking through the wines at the other end of the liquor aisle, Clarke texted Bellamy, _Is it cool if Raven comes over for dinner?_

_Tonight??_

_Yes tonight_

_I need to clean._

_The place is spotless already_

_I’m a shitty cook._

_You’re amazing_

When he didn’t reply, she added, _Please? I’ll clean my hair out of the shower drain_

_And put it in the corner of the tub_

_At least it’ll be out of the drain!_

_Fine but you’re doing dishes tonight. The right way. Clean them and *then* put them in the dishwasher._

_But that’s what the dishwasher is FOR_

“Everything okay?” Raven asked. She had a bottle of chardonnay in hand.

Clarke shoved her phone in her pocket. “Yeah.”

“How’s this one?” She held the bottle up.

“Looks good to me.”

 

* * *

 

If Clarke thought Bellamy was acting weird in private, he was even weirder in private with Raven in tow—as stern and stoic as he normally was in workshop. Clarke was quick to get a glass of wine in his hand while she took over garlic bread duties.

When Raven excused herself to use the restroom, Clarke hissed, “What is going on with you?”

“What?”

“You’re acting like a block of wood.”

“I am a block of wood.”

“Look, can I be blunt with you?”

“When are you not?”

“Raven wants to be your friend.”

Bellamy stared at her like she’d spoken a different language.

“I know it’s hard for you to understand that people like you, Bell, but they do.”

“She doesn’t even know me.”

“That’s exactly the problem. She _wants_ to know you.”

Now he was looking at her like she’d just insulted Faulkner. 

“God, why?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She admires you? Thinks you’re cool? Enjoys your writing? Has spent a year and a half in your physical proximity without knowing jack-shit about you?”

Raven came back into the kitchen and Clarke resumed rubbing garlic over slices of Italian bread. Bellamy picked up his wine glass and took a long gulp.

“So what’ve you been reading lately?” he asked.

 

* * *

 

By the time Clarke brought out dessert—a chocolate torte Bellamy had made the day prior—he and Raven had gotten into a lively discussion on publishing. More specifically, Raven was writing journals on her napkin for Bellamy to submit to, and Bellamy was telling her all the reasons they’d reject him.

“You need to send ‘Wanheda’ to _Fence_ ,” she said.

“Nope. Poetry mag.”

“They publish fiction too.”

“Pretty fiction.”

“Your fiction is plenty pretty.”

“My fiction is hideous. Abhorrent. That's kind of the point of it.”

“ _Missouri Review_ ,” Raven said while jotting it down.

“My stuff’s too weird for them.”

“ _Tin House_.”

“Not weird enough.”

“ _Granta._ ”

To this Bellamy said nothing, and when Raven looked up at him again, he said, “Not worth acknowledging.”

“It’s a great mag.”

“Exactly. Too good for my shit.”

“It’s not shit. It’s great work. You should be proud of it.” Raven looked at Clarke. “Tell him he should be proud of it.”

“You should really be proud of it,” Clarke told him.

Bellamy snorted and took another gulp of wine. “You’re just being nice.”

Raven glared at him. “I am not nice to anyone. You take that back.”

“You’re nice to me,” he said.

“And I’m not happy about it at all.”

But now Bellamy was smiling, and as Clarke nibbled at her torte while listening silently to their chatter, she felt something warm spread through her chest.

 

* * *

 

Near two in the morning, Clarke excused herself to go to bed. They had relocated to the living room, where they had intended to watch a movie but instead started brainstorming their unfulfilled story ideas. Raven even had a notebook open in her lap while she took down Bellamy’s feedback.

“I’ve had this idea for years and I just can’t make it happen in a short story,” Raven was saying. “There are like, these chips that hold your consciousness, and they can be implanted into other bodies.”

“What’s the conflict?” Bellamy asked.

“I was thinking, like, the prior body’s consciousness is still there, so it creates this hive mind. It’d be a story about sentient boundaries. You know, like, where do you end and I begin? And also it can erase all your pain, so people get addicted to it, but it makes them forget about their loved ones.”

“Well there’s your problem.”

“What?”

“It’s not a story, it’s a novel. You’re gonna need two hundred pages to give that kind of conflict room to breathe.”

Clarke made sure they each had a glass of water, and didn’t think either of them noticed when she went to bed. When she brushed her teeth and got into pajamas, they were talking much more quietly. Clarke wanted to let it go, but she couldn’t help it. She pressed her ear to the crack of her bedroom door.

“It wouldn’t be like that,” Raven was saying.

“You don’t know for sure.”

“You guys are nothing like Lexa and Echo. They’re poets. They have no chill.”

“It’s just not a risk I can afford to take.”

“You said you were writing something. Are you going to show it to her?”

“Yeah, eventually. When it’s done. It’s, uh—” Bellamy paused, and Clarke could imagine him doing one of his nervous habit things: biting at a fingernail, rubbing his hand over he scar on his forehead. “Longer than I expected. It should probably become my thesis at this point.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s over a hundred pages and it’s still not where I want it to be.”

Clarke heard a thump like Raven had punched his shoulder. “Bellamy Blake, you’re a memoirist.”

“Oh god, don’t say that.”

“What’s it about?”

Bellamy didn’t answer.

“It’s fine,” Raven assured him. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“Have you ever googled me?”

“What? No, that’s creepy.”

“Do it.”

“Seriously?”

They fell silent. Clarke grabbed her phone from the bed and googled Bellamy’s name. She’d never thought to do that before. Her heart broke at what she saw—dozens of headlines from 2004 about a teenage boy who shot a police officer, the subsequent hearings, and the sentence that changed Bellamy’s life.

“Oh my god,” Raven said.

“Yeah.” After a pause, Bellamy added, “The news made it out to be something it wasn’t. For the first few years, I wanted to right it, wanted to tell the truth of what happened. Then I realized no one would hear it. They preferred the story they were told. The truth didn’t matter.”

“And now you finally love someone enough to want them to know the truth,” Raven said.

“I—yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

“So it’s not really the Lexa/Echo thing that’s stopping you but that Clarke doesn’t know the truth of you yet, and she can’t know until you’re done writing.”

“I just want her to be able to make an informed decision. I don’t want to force her into a relationship with—with someone who’s done the things I’ve done. She only knows pieces of me.”

“What about her? Do you think you only know pieces of her?”

Bellamy paused as if to consider it. “I have enough pieces that anything else she shows me will just add clarity to a picture I already love.”

“Christ,” Raven said. “That's disgusting. Beautiful, but gross. Exactly why I don’t date writers.”

Bellamy laughed and it seemed to ease the tension, and Clarke flicked off her light and went to bed, unsure how to feel about what she’d just heard.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Clarke found Raven asleep on the couch, covered in a blanket from Bellamy’s room. Clarke put on a pot of coffee and woke Raven up by shifting her legs so she could sit under them. Raven made a grumpy noise, and tried to kick Clarke, but it didn’t land.

“Coffee,” Raven muttered.

“Right next to you.”

Raven opened her eyes and shot out a hand to pick up her cup. She sat up straight and sipped at it.

“I overheard a little of what you and Bellamy talked about last night,” Clarke said.

Raven raised a finger and took a longer swig.

“On one hand, I’m glad you two broke the ice finally,” Clarke continued. “On the other, I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

“So I’m just supposed to, what, pretend everything’s okay? That I’m perfectly fine being just friends?”

“Roommates.”

“Which makes it even worse _._ ”

“Why are you in a hurry?”

Clarke stared at her. “Are you kidding? Have you seen him?”

“I’m serious. Do you think you guys have a shot at like, a real thing?”

“Yeah. If that's what he wants."

“Then you have no reason to rush.”

Clarke made a pitiful noise.

“It would be different if I thought he was yanking your chain,” Raven said. “But he’s working on it. Like, hard. He’s facing his demons head-on to be with you. It might take a while, but anyone with the guts to get their shit in order before letting someone into their heart is someone worth being patient for. The rest of the world just shoves their brokenness onto anyone willing to love them, but Bellamy’s not like that. He wants to be good for you.”

Clarke hadn’t considered it that way, she supposed because she wouldn’t do the same. She’d toss her baggage on anyone willing to carry it without lightening the load for them first. Then again, she didn't have quite the past that Bellamy did. A dead father, an estranged mother, sure. But despite all she had in common with him, she didn't—and couldn't—share his experience.

“You’re right, I guess. I can wait.”

 

* * *

 

Sometime mid-February, she caught a bit of a stuffy nose on a Saturday afternoon that quickly turned into something worse. By Sunday, she found herself in the throes of a fever, rolling over to look at her clock which read ten a.m., then falling back asleep until the sound of knocking woke her up.

“Clarke? It’s past noon, are you okay?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t—her throat hurt too badly. She wasn’t even sure if the knocking was real or a dream.

The door opened and Clarke let out a little groan and Bellamy sat beside her on the bed. He pressed his hand to her forehead and went, “Jesus. You’re burning up.”

She fell back asleep for a bit and was woken up once more. Bellamy had brought her medicine and forced her to sit upright to take it, and there was also soup involved that she ate with some saltines. Then a mug of tea made it into her hands and she sipped at it and gathered the strength to say, “Gotta plan class.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll cover you.”

She lifted her head to look at him. Even that was painful. Her whole body ached. “They’ll like you more than me.”

“No they won’t. It’ll be fine. You just rest.”

He took the tea and soup away and left her with a cold compress for her head. She fell asleep again, and when she woke up once more, night had fallen and Bellamy was making her sit up again to take more meds and eat more soup, but a different kind this time, tomato, and he’d also made a grilled cheese sandwich.

“We’ll get you to the health center tomorrow for antibiotics,” he said.

She nodded into her soup bowl, which didn’t seem to get any emptier even though she swore she was eating it. When she finished as much as she could, she handed it back to him and said, “Hold me.”

“Is that an order?”

She nodded.

He let out a little laugh and said, “Let me clean this up and I’ll be right back.”

She’d fallen asleep again before he left the room, and only stirred a little by the time he came back to curl around her. She was shivering with fever despite being covered in blankets. He held her more tightly and she might have managed to say “thank you,” but she wasn’t sure.

 

* * *

 

The following day was Valentine’s Day, but in her fevered state she didn’t realize it. She felt marginally better, enough to sit up and drink a smoothie Bellamy had made her for breakfast and which helped soothe her throat. She told him her class was in the rhetoric unit and he asked if he could do his lesson on political propaganda and she said yes. When he left, she shuffled her way to the shower, where the water hurt her throbbing skin but cleared a bit of her congestion, and she relocated to the couch where she binged _Arrested Development_ between naps.

True to his word, Bellamy came home and dragged her to the clinic and assured her that her class was well-behaved and very attentive. She didn’t believe him at all, but she lacked the energy to say as much. At the clinic, she had blood taken and peed in a cup and coughed on a poor nurse while getting her blood pressure read. When they got in the car, prescription in hand, he said, “You have to take these with food. What sounds good?”

“Ice cream.”

“It’s February.”

She glared at him. “Ice cream.”

Instead of making her wait in the car, he dropped her off at home and helped her inside before leaving again. Going to the clinic had worn her out, so she passed out immediately, and when she woke up again, Bellamy was sitting on the bed, still wearing his leather jacket, grocery bag and spoon in hand. She sat up and coughed into the crook of her elbow.

“I got you Cherry Garcia, hazelnut gelato, and a box of Drumsticks.”

“Cherry Garcia.”

He handed the pint to her with the spoon, then pulled out a blue Gatorade and her antibiotics to set on the bedside table, and then a big stuffed bear holding a red heart that said BE MINE.

“Is this for me?” she asked, taking the bear from him before he could answer. She hadn't had a stuffed animal since she was a kid.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said.

“Does this mean I’m your Valentine?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never had a Valentine. What’s it like?”

“Like horribly inconveniencing yourself to take care of your flu-ridden best friend.”

“Then I guess you’re my Valentine.”

She hugged the bear to her chest. “Thank you.”

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead to get her temperature, but then it turned into a kiss. “Any time, Princess.”


	8. Chapter 8

“I’m dropping out,” Bellamy said. “This isn’t worth it.”

Bellamy, Clarke, and Raven were at the coffeehouse, working on Pike’s big submission assignment. Pike was workshop leader this semester, and as much as Clarke had appreciated Marcus’ positivity and patience, she much preferred Pike’s approach: maximum five minutes of affirmation, and the rest of the time devoted to criticism. And when anyone went off-topic, or if the discussion derailed, he quickly righted it again. He was kind of a dick about _The Ark_ , which he called “a cute story,” but it was a small price to pay for not being dragged into Lexa’s pedantic insistence on analyzing white space, or Murphy’s rants about grammatical minutia.

The assignment was thus: submit one story to ten lit mags. Screencap the submission confirmation emails. Draft a tracking sheet.

Clarke hated it. Bellamy hated it. Raven said, “The expectation of an MFA is that you get published. Pike is just making sure we get off our asses and make it happen.”

“I write YA,” Clarke said. “Can you name any YA lit mags off the top of your head? Does that sound like a flourishing market to you?”

“You have other stuff,” Raven replied. “Comics are big right now. Submit one of those.”

The assignment was due at the end of the semester, but they decided it was tedious enough to begin early, and agreed to all work on it together.

“And you,” Raven said to Bellamy. “You need to aim high.”

“Why?” Bellamy asked.

“Because you don’t want to publish anyway, so you might as well go top-tier and get rejected. You have nothing to lose since you have nothing at stake, and you might get some personal rejections out of it.”

“She’s right, Bell,” Clarke agreed.

“I have _Tin House_ on the list. What more do you want?”

“ _Memorious,”_ Raven suggested.

“ _Gulf Coast,_ ” Clarke added. “ _The Gettysburg Review, Fugue, Cincinnati Review, AGNI, Black Warrior—”_

“Okay, I get it,” Bellamy said. 

“Speaking of,” Clarke said. “Are you going to AWP?”

“God no,” Bellamy said.

“What were you expecting?” Raven added.

“It’s the place writers loosen up,” Clarke said. “And the most tightly-wound writer we know is Bellamy.”

“I’m right here,” he said.

Raven had begun hanging out with them more often. Her presence was a relief, because Bellamy acted like himself around her, and seemed to like having her around, and the silences were fewer and further between. Raven, too, seemed to be fine acting as the buffer between them.

Waiting for Bellamy to come around to the same conclusion as Clarke about their relationship proved difficult. What felt like an emotional mosquito bite at first turned into full-body hives after two months living with Bellamy. She wanted to respect his decision to stay just friends, she really did, but she wanted to make out with him more. She wanted to write him love letters on his typewriter to find when he got home. She wanted to crawl into bed with him at night. She wanted, and she kept wanting.

When he walked around the apartment in only his boxers, she couldn’t help but think about his cock in her mouth, the weight of it, the taste of it. The sounds he made, her hair in his grip. She hoped Bellamy didn’t notice how quickly she ran through batteries, or if he did, he didn’t mention it. She put them on the grocery list, and he bought them without question (along with things she didn't have to ask for: her favorite coffee creamer and cereal, Cup Noodles and snacks on sale he thought she'd like). She started wrapping her own hand around her neck while she masturbated, remembering the way his felt on Christmas. She thought of his tongue in her mouth, his teeth on her breast. She imagined what his lips would feel like against her cunt—he’d be patient, she hoped. Take his time. Enjoy it. And after she came, he’d roll her on her knees and sink into her, her hips in his hands, pounding into her until the neighbors complained.

Just thinking about it brought a flush to her face, and she realized she was staring at him now, specifically his mouth. She also noticed he was staring back at her with a quizzical expression, so she looked away to Raven and her blush ran hotter.

“It’s free,” Raven said. “The school reimburses you for it. It’s like a vacation, but for nerds.”

AWP was the giant annual writers’ conference Clarke had been wanting to go to for years. She’d heard so many things about it—four days of nonstop partying, a phonebook-width program guide, knocking elbows with your favorite authors. It sounded like heaven.

“I don’t know,” Bellamy said. “I went last year. It wasn’t great. I’d rather spend the time writing.”

“Is this what he’s always like?” Raven asked Clarke.

“Yep. Writing is his highest priority.”

“Octavia is my highest priority. Writing is a close second.”

“Where do I fall on this list?” Clarke asked.

He ticked off his fingers. “O, writing, teaching, reading, breathing, drinking, eating, shelter, sleep, you. Hey, you made the top ten.”

“I’m never cleaning another dish again,” Clarke said. “Straight to the dishwasher from now on.”

“You’d be higher on the list if you put your damn dishes away. I’ve been wrenching dried tea bags out of mugs for weeks.”

“I find it endearing,” Clarke said.

“You find your own sloppiness endearing?”

Before Clarke could reply, Raven cut in. “Back to AWP. I think we should split a room.”

“I’m not going,” Bellamy said.

“Sure you’re not,” Raven replied.

“There is absolutely no way I’m going to AWP.”

Bellamy registered for AWP after workshop. They booked a hotel room a couple blocks from the convention center, two queen beds, and they didn’t talk about how the sleeping arrangements would work out, so Clarke didn’t let herself think about it.

“What was it like?” Clarke asked after plans were made and Raven had gone home. It was one of those nights where Bellamy seemed to have a gravitational pull, and Clarke had to grip the couch cushion to avoid floating over to him and crawling into his lap.

“AWP? It’s...big. And chaotic. And exhausting.”

“Any tips?” Clarke had already gotten into pajamas. She was wearing shorts and a low-cut tank top despite the temperature, knowing her nipples were probably showing, sitting in a way that squished her boobs together. She’d begun doing this kind of thing more frequently out of a passive-aggressive disdain for their situation. It didn’t matter; Bellamy wasn’t looking. He was scrolling through the AWP website on his laptop reading panel descriptions.

“Pick one subject you’re into and only go to panels about that subject, instead of doing everything that gets your attention.”

“Explain.”

He finally looked at her, then his eyes flicked down to her chest, and he pointedly looked away again.

“I like realism, readings, pedagogy, structure and form, things like that. But there was no way to go to everything I wanted to go to, so I limited myself last year to panels about pedagogy. This year I’ll probably do some outside readings and—” He abruptly stopped.

“And?”

“Nonfiction, maybe. There’s one here on the personal essay, and another about structuring your memoir, and how to write trauma.”

“Bellamy Blake,” Clarke said, “you really are a memoirist.”

“Maybe.”

“You haven’t talked about it since…” She trailed off, unable to invoke Thanksgiving, and thereby Christmas, and thereby the agonizing state of their relationship.

“I know. It’s almost done. It’s just kind of a mess right now and it’s all out of order and I need to transcribe it and—”

“You don’t need to transcribe it. I can read the typewritten copy. It doesn’t even need to be finished. Or in order. You can give me pieces.”

He looked at her again, this time at her eyes instead of her chest. “I’m not ready, Clarke. I’m sorry.”

“And what happens when you are ready?” She guessed now was as good a time as any to talk about it now that the subject had been breached.

“Then you can read it.”

“What happens when I read it?”

“You’ll probably not want to speak to me anymore, and I’ll have to accept that.”

“But what if that doesn’t happen? What if I read it and I still love you?”

“I’m not—I can’t let myself think about that.”

“Let me lay it all out for you.” She placed her palms on the couch cushion between them. He was still staring at his laptop, tracing his finger over the bump on the J key. “This isn’t working for me anymore, Bell. Being just friends isn’t working. Writing buddies, ideal readers, roommates. We’re all these things to each other, but—it’s killing me.”

He stayed silent. Clarke stayed silent with him, not sure what more she needed to say.

“We’re not in a relationship, Clarke,” he finally said. “We can’t be.”

“Do you want to be?”

“I like what we have. I’m happy with what we have. I don’t want things to change.”

“You’re telling me you don’t think about waking up beside each other? Kissing each other goodbye? Having sex whenever and however we want? Because that’s it. That’s all that would change.”

“I don't know about that. And you know, I’ve never really done this before,” he admitted. “Been in a relationship, I mean.”

“You’ve never had a girlfriend.”

“There was a girl once. Gina. I worked with her on a construction site. We dated for a while, but it didn’t—I don’t know. It didn’t feel like this. I figured she’d get tired of me and move on, but she didn’t, and I let her hang on for longer than I should’ve. And later, after I’d broken up with her, I realized I didn’t really know her at all, and she didn’t know me. We were just bodies revolving around each other before parting ways.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing? Hanging on? Are we just bodies revolving around each other?”

“No, I feel connected to you. And that’s a first for me, so I’m hesitant to do anything that might break the connection.”

“Including make it stronger.”

“You know I’m not a big risk-taker. I write traditionally. I don’t publish. I keep to myself. Then you came along and made me question that. But then Octavia left, and I realized—I can’t lose you, too.”

“You didn’t lose Octavia. She’s a couple hours away. You text her all the time. You got Snapchat for her.”

“But it’s different now. It’s not the two of us against reality anymore. It’s us living in separate realities with the occasional overlap. And that’s been really, really hard for me, and the only thing that makes it easier is having you here.”

She took his hand in hers and looked him in the eye. “So what am I supposed to do? Wait for you to come around?”

He pulled his hand away. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that. You can do whatever you want with whoever you want.”

“I don’t want anyone else.”

He didn’t say anything to that, and when it was clear he wasn’t going to continue, she told him goodnight and went to bed. She had trouble falling asleep.

 

* * *

 

It was a long drive to DC in a van with Jasper and Monty, who played rounds of Twenty Questions and I Spy until Clarke wanted to shoot herself, but they finally arrived and checked into their hotel. The place was on the sketchy end of the spectrum, but it wasn’t terrible, and Bellamy immediately declared the bed closest to the door. Raven tossed her duffel on the other bed. Clarke set her bag by the desk for the time being.

“I’m gonna grab some snacks from the convenience store downstairs,” Raven said. “Want anything?”

They both declined, and when Raven left, Clarke cleared her throat and asked, “So where should I sleep?”

They hadn’t really spoken since their discussion the other night, but the distance didn’t feel forced. Clarke was busy with a midterm seminar paper, and based on the imminent clacking of keys, Bellamy was occupied by writing, presumably to make up for being gone for four days. Even though they weren’t really talking, Clarke still made his lunch for him in the morning, which she had gotten in the habit of doing when she made her own, since she had an early morning class and he didn’t have to wake up until ten. And Bellamy still kept dinner leftovers warm for her when she got home, and cleaned up her dirty mugs, and folded her laundry the way she liked. He still bought her groceries and she still snuck money into his wallet because he refused to take any from her even though their TA stipends were less than minimum wage. So they weren’t fighting, exactly, but it still felt like something was off, a piece of their relationship turned a couple degrees to the left, and Clarke didn’t know how to right it.

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Bellamy said. He was putting his clothes away in a drawer, which was just such a ridiculous _Bellamy_ thing to do, but which she found so unbearably endearing she had to press her fingernails into her palm.

“I’ll sleep with Raven, then.” She sounded petty. She didn’t care.

“Okay,” he said, unfazed. “Fine with me.”

“Fine.”

Before the tension could eat them alive, Bellamy asked, “Are you going to put your stuff away, or just live out of your suitcase like an animal?”

 

* * *

 

Raven was terrible to sleep with. For such a small person, her limbs were everywhere. When they had gone to sleep, she lay facing the window, curled on her side. Now, less than an hour later, her ankle was between Clarke’s calves and her fist somehow balled up under Clarke’s ribs. She had taken all the blankets and was snoring into Clarke’s neck. Whenever Clarke shifted to try to make herself more comfortable, Raven moved to undo it. Now Clarke was at the very edge of the bed, about to fall off.

Just across the gap between beds lay Bellamy, sleeping silently on his side, facing away from them. He was a tiny furnace while he slept—shirtless, covered in only a sheet, the duvet discarded. And she was so cold, and so uncomfortable and—fuck it.

As deftly as she could manage, she sat up. Raven immediately made a little groaning noise, as if it were her sole purpose while sleeping to annoy Clarke and now she was being deprived.

Clarke crawled under the covers of Bellamy’s bed. Being a light sleeper, he woke up and glanced behind him. She didn’t feel like explaining or risking waking Raven up, so she stayed silent and let him figure it out on his own. Or, she thought, maybe he would throw a fit and tell her to go back to her own bed.

Instead, he rolled over to face her, and ran his fingers through her hair. She scooted closer to him and after just a second’s hesitation, he wrapped her in his embrace, and she pressed her forehead against his chest. She felt like she could finally breathe.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. For everything, he meant. For being this way. For pushing her away. She knew. And she was frustrated and impatient and lonely and sad, but he was holding her, and he was in her life, and no matter what, he was still her best friend.

“It’s okay,” she whispered back.  



	9. Chapter 9

Clarke pulled her AWP lanyard over her head and shouldered her tote bag. Two registration kiosks down, Raven and Bellamy were doing the same. Like Bellamy had warned her, AWP was completely overwhelming. There were ten thousand writers here. Ten thousand writers, all with their own stories, pieces, poems. All wanting publication. All wanting to be heard. It made her feel minuscule.

Clarke had been the first to wake up this morning. If Raven noticed she’d jumped ship in the middle of the night, she didn’t say anything. Bellamy had rolled over at some point; Clarke woke up curled against his spine, and spent a handful of minutes running her fingers over the freckles on his shoulders. Based on the shallowness of his breathing, she thought he might have been awake, and awake too for the small kiss she pressed to the nape of his neck before getting up to take a shower.

Bellamy already had the program open in his hands as he approached, and Raven shortly after. They pulled off to the side so the swarm of people could get easily past, and Clarke said, “Where are you guys headed first?”

“Coffee,” Raven said. She wasn’t smiling.

“A panel on teaching non-western, anti-imperialist poetry,” Bellamy said.

Clarke scrolled through the program app on her phone, where she had marked about eighty panels she wanted to attend. “I’m headed to one called ‘Defining YA.’”

“We’ll meet up here for lunch at noon?” Bellamy asked.

“Sounds good,” Clarke said.

Raven grunted an affirmative and turned toward the Starbucks.

 

* * *

 

“Defining YA” was a great panel, and Clarke took three pages of notes. Her next panel, though, “Adapting Your Novel to Screen” was a bit of a bust, and it depressed her to realize how much of modern novel-writing was only intended to eventually be made into film, rather than appreciating the medium on its own. One member of the panel was an agent whose sole job was to get movie adaptation deals for books. Clarke’s highest aspiration for _The Ark_ was to find a worn-out, plastic-coated copy of it in a library one day, maybe open it to see a page or two earmarked. Ideally, too, she would be able to open it to the inside back cover and see the little manila sleeve and the card inside it with the due dates stamped haphazardly on each line, but she knew libraries didn’t do that anymore.

 _How’s it going?_ she texted Bellamy.

For the first time in the half-year they’d been friends, Bellamy didn’t check the text right away. She watched the timestamp and waited, but it didn’t appear. Loneliness crept over her despite being surrounded by people, and all she wanted was to rest her head on Bellamy’s shoulder and close her eyes and listen to him tell her she was a good writer, and she’d sell _The Ark,_ and if she wanted it to be a movie, it would become one, but otherwise it didn’t have to be.

After the panel, she found Raven first, who was at a small bistro table with her MacBook open in front of her, typing away with intense concentration. A Venti sat beside her laptop. Clarke dragged a third chair over for Bellamy before plopping into a chair opposite Raven.

“You didn’t go to any panels?” Clarke asked.

Raven glanced up from her laptop. “This is prime people-watching time, Clarke. Feel the energy right now. This is the twilight of the writing life.”

Clarke didn’t think she could get up the emotional or mental energy to string words together into a sentence, let alone churn out actual prose. She left her tote bag at the table as she got herself a coffee, thinking maybe she was just tired, and when she came back with a caramel macchiato, Bellamy had sat down at the table.

“How were your panels?” Clarke asked.

“Awesome,” he said. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him use the word “awesome” before. He checked his phone and added, “Sorry, I was busy taking notes.”

“Know how to teach non-western, anti-imperialist poetry now?”

“I feel like I could structure an entire class on it.”

“That’d be really fun.”

He tilted his head. “You okay?”

Raven wasn’t paying any attention to them.

“Yeah. Well, no. I don’t know.”

He raised his eyebrows in question.

“All these people, wanting the same thing we want. At school it feels like our cohort is the only opinion that matters. We write for each other. But this place makes me feel so small and worthless, and like the only important thing is publishing and money and clout.” She wanted to add something about wishing he would be closer to her in any way right now, physically or emotionally, that they could close the gap of their distance while she felt so vulnerable, but she bit the inside of her cheek instead.

“You should definitely avoid the book fair.”

“Thanks.”

“My mom used to tell me—and I hated this, I always thought it was really fucked-up—she used to tell me, ‘You just have to be better than them.’ Easy as that. Not work harder, not want it more, just...be better. And when I’d point out you can’t _be better_ than other people, she would say, ‘You don’t need proof. You just need to believe it.’ It wasn’t until I got to the MFA that I ever had to practice that mentality.”

“You don’t think you’re better than anyone else.”

“No, but I can believe I’m improving, and that I can want to be good at something just for the sake of discipline. Not everything has to be exploited for money and fame.”

“I’m writing this all down, by the way,” Raven said. “Pure gold. I’m telling you, this place is magic.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke decided to go to fewer panels after that. Raven continued spending her time writing. Bellamy was bouncing all over the place like a toddler with too much sugar. It was hard for her to believe there was ever a time he didn’t want to come, when he was so obviously in his element here. She kept having to track him down and make him drink water and eat a snack, which he complained about between panels because “this is going to be a big one. I need to get there early to get a seat.”

By dinner, Clarke’s feet hurt, and her shoulder ached from carrying the tote bag. She couldn’t find Raven, and Bellamy was in a panel, so she resigned herself to the book fair. When she entered, the sheer size hurt her brain. It could have been an airplane hanger. Rows upon rows of vendors were set up selling books and journals and grad programs. She wandered up and down the aisles, picking up pretty things, business cards and postcards, buttons and pens, tiny notebooks, whatever trinkets were lying on the table. She had a couple of conversations with people who asked what she wrote. She said YA and they smiled politely and didn’t inquire further.

She stopped at the _Tondc_ booth where Lexa was animatedly talking to someone, a disinterested-looking boy who was probably in an undergrad program somewhere. Clarke slipped behind the table and took a seat in the empty canvas chair, rooted through her bag and got out her water bottle and chugged it.

When Lexa finally disengaged with the poor boy, she leaned on the table and asked, “How’s it going so far?”

“Hard to say.”

“First time, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah, I was bummed out my first time too.”

“Really?”

“Giant commercial space filled with writers. It should feel welcoming but it was only ever alienating for me.”

“That’s where I’m at.”

“It gets better. Once you meet more writers, it’s like the only time of year you get to pull your head out of a book and actually connect with people.”

“So that’s what it’s for?”

“Pretty much. The more you come here, the fewer panels you go to, the less you do. You show up and make lunch plans with people you haven’t seen in a while, stop at the booths of journals that published you to meet the editor. Maybe catch a reading or two.”

“That—shit, that’s way more my style.”

“You’re welcome to work the booth with me. It’s a lot better than rushing from panel to panel.”

“Yeah,” Clarke said. “That sounds fun.”

 

* * *

 

 _Where are you?_ Bellamy texted to the group chat.

 _Bookfair. Tondc booth,_ Clarke replied.

Raven didn’t text back.

_How did you get roped into that?_

_I can’t take an interest in my school’s litmag?_

_I’ll be there in a sec._

Bellamy showed up a few minutes later, pen behind his ear, messenger bag over his shoulder. He had a smear of blue ink on his cheek.

“How were the rest of your panels?” she asked.

He picked up an issue of the magazine and flipped through it. “Mostly good. The one on teaching creative writing in prison was kind of triggery. Probably a bad idea to go to that one.”

“Jesus, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Want to find Raven and grab dinner?”

“I can when Lexa gets back.”

“I saw a sushi place on our way from the hotel.”

Bellamy kept her company until Lexa came back from the bathroom, and he immediately went from regular Bellamy (bouncing on his toes, rambling about panels) to MFA ghost Bellamy (shoulders shrugged up like a cat, mostly silent).

When Lexa told Clarke she was welcome to leave, she and Bellamy navigated out of the packed book fair in silence, and when they exited to the lobby, he asked, “So are you and Lexa, like, friends now?”

“I don’t know, why?”

“No reason.”

Before Clarke could reply, they ran into Raven, who said immediately, “Food.”

 

* * *

 

Once the sushi place was recommended, Raven texted Monty, who texted Jasper, and Jasper realized they didn’t have a giant group chat to stay in touch during the conference, so he made one, and that was how everyone got Bellamy’s number.

“I almost made it,” he said sadly at his phone, which was blowing up with texts. “Two whole years without being dragged into a department-wide group chat.”

“You can’t win everything,” Raven said. They were at the restaurant at a long table waiting for the rest of the cohort to join them. “So are we doing the dance party later?”

“The what?” Clarke asked.

Bellamy ran a hand down his face. “I really don’t want to.”

“It’s like a sad rave, but there’s an open bar for the first hour, so everyone gets shit-faced real fast,” Raven said.

“It’s just a bunch of writers getting drunk and dancing,” Bellamy added. “Or their approximation of it.”

“I’m a writer,” Clarke added. “And I’m bad at dancing. _And_ I love free booze. I’m in.”

“Awesome,” Raven said. She looked to Bellamy. “What about you, Scrooge?”

“Absolutely not.”

An hour later, the three of them were in a darkened banquet hall outfitted with club lights and a DJ, standing in a long-ass line for free booze. Raven came up with the idea of double-fisting and drinking while they waited in line again. Clarke got two of the house drink, some pisco thing, and met Raven at the back of the line, who had two double shots of whiskey. Bellamy met them with a single beer in hand.

“Oh come on,” Clarke shouted over the music. No one was on the dance floor yet because everyone was sober and in line for drinks. Discarded conference tote bags lined the walls and coats were piled on top of bistro tables.

“I have an eight-thirty panel in the morning,” Bellamy said. “I’m not going to be hungover for it.”

Clarke downed both drinks and got two more before the open bar hour was up. Raven got two more whiskeys. Bellamy sat out. It was Jasper who dragged Raven to the dance floor, and Raven who dragged Clarke, and Clarke who looked back at Bellamy, and Bellamy who looked at her and shook his head disdainfully.

“You’re no fun!” she shouted at him, but he was too far away to hear.

They danced to early 2000s club hits that Clarke hadn’t heard since the early 2000s. The dance floor was now packed like a proper club, but instead of young, hot people in full contour hoping to get laid, it was a bunch of middle-aged writers and MFA students taking a much-needed break from academia.

It took maybe a half hour for Clarke to get thoroughly and completely smashed. During “Like a G6,” it started to get to her head; she felt overheated and thirsty and a sudden wave of missing Bellamy came over her, so she found Raven and shouted, “I’m gonna go find Bellamy!”

Raven nodded as she twirled Harper in a wide circle, and Clarke pushed her way out of the pseudo-moshpit.

Bellamy was right where they had left him, beside their tote bags and jackets drinking his beer. She ran straight into him and wrapped her arms around his middle and buried her face in his chest. He hugged her back and said something, but she couldn’t hear, so she let go and took him by the hand and dragged him out of the banquet hall.

She stumbled around until she found an alcove of sorts, the kind that probably used to hold a payphone but now just looked like a stylish jut in the wall, and she pushed him against it and kissed him.

Distantly, she knew she was very, very drunk and this was a bad, bad idea, but Bellamy made a growling noise in this throat and kissed her back, sucked her bottom lip between his teeth and bit down. She moaned and kissed him harder, ran her hands under his shirt and clawed her nails down his back. He hissed through his teeth. The ache she had carried around all day finally slipped away. The floor was spinning beneath her and she knew people were walking behind them, but it didn’t stop her from reaching down to fumble with his belt buckle.

He grabbed her hands and pulled back and said, “Whoa, Clarke, stop.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“We’re in public.”

“So? Wanna blow you.” She leaned in and whispered, “You like my mouth on your cock, right?”

He took her by the shoulders and pushed her away from him. “Clarke.”

She looked at him sternly. “Bellamy.”

“We can’t do this.”

“We can and we should.”

“You’re drunk, we're a mile away from our hotel, and we already talked about why this can’t happen.”

Only about a third of the words were making it into her brain. “You mean when you told me you didn’t want to be my boyfriend.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You did. You said you didn’t want to be in a relationship with me and we were just friends.”

“I said I’m not ready to be in a relationship with you.”

“So you want—want to be in a relationship with me?” She could tell her words were slurred but she couldn’t figure out how to sharpen them.

“Maybe.”

She could feel her face fall, but had no control over it.

“God,” he said, “look. Look at me.” He tilted her chin up. “I love you, Clarke. Nothing is going to change that.”

“But you don’t love me the way I love you.” She poked his chest. “I love you like a boyfriend. Like I don’t want to love anyone else. I want to go to bed with you and wake up with you and fight about you with my mom and—and share lesson plans with you.”

He opened his mouth like he was about to stop her from word-vomiting her feelings for him, but she didn’t let him. “And I don’t care where you’ve been or what you’ve done. Wherever you came from is how you became who you are today, and that’s who I love. And I’ll love you tomorrow, and the next day. Whoever you become, I’ll love you. I just wish you would believe me. I wish you would trust me as much as I trust you.”

“Clarke…”

“You’re a coward, Bellamy. You won’t take a chance on your writing and you won’t take a chance on me.”

“I can’t lose you. Don’t you get that? Don’t you understand what it would do to me if you weren’t in my life?”

“Isn’t that a risk worth taking? To give as much love you can possibly give someone and dare them to carry it all? I might be needy and flaky and too much to handle sometimes, and you might be stodgy and cold and—honestly, you probably have PTSD or something, but we see each other. More than anyone else, we see each other.”

He replied with something, but she couldn't hear because something suddenly clicked in her brain before she could physically feel anything, some urgent exclamation point. “Oh, god.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

She ran toward the restrooms which were thankfully mere feet away, shoved into the women’s and into the nearest stall, fell to her knees, and puked.

She didn’t know how long she was there, curled around the toilet while waves of nausea crashed over her. Her head throbbed. People came and went and a few of them made noises of sympathy whenever they heard Clarke retch.

After a while, someone was pushing open her stall door which she hadn’t had time to lock, shoving a bottle of water in her hands and hoisting her up.

“C’mon, big girl, you got this.” Raven, probably.

“Don’t got this,” Clarke said.

“We’re going to clean you up a little. Bellamy’s ordering a Lyft back to the hotel.”

“Don’t wanna hotel.”

“Sure you do. It’s comfy there.”

Raven steered her to the sink and propped her against it, then wet a paper towel and cleaned up Clarke’s face and neck. She left Clarke there for a moment to go into the stall and wipe up the mess and flush, and when she came back, she helped Clarke out the door.

Bellamy was waiting just outside with all their stuff, and the moment she went from tile to carpet, he swept her into his arms. Clarke wanted to fight it, but she didn’t have the energy, and rested her head against Bellamy’s shoulder.

“I’ll see you back at the hotel later,” Raven said. She’d had more to drink than Clarke but she didn’t even sound drunk. Not fair.

“Sure,” Bellamy said. A minute later, the chill air of March bit into her, but then she was being shoved into the backseat of a warm car, where she focused on Bellamy's arm around her and not puking and was thankfully successful.

She didn’t remember much of the drive or getting to the hotel, just that their Lyft driver was trying to make small talk and Bellamy was having absolutely none of it. Then she may have blacked out for a bit, and when she came to, she was being carried into the room and placed gently on the bed.

Bellamy tugged off her shirt and she lifted her arms to help. “If this is all it took to get you to take off my clothes, would’ve gotten shit-faced sooner.”

“Come on,” Bellamy said. “Let’s get you cleaned up and in bed.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“Clarke.”

“Bellamy.”

She took off her bra and flung it across the room, and fell back on the bed. Vertigo overtook her and she had to sit up again.

Bellamy knelt down and took off her shoes and socks, reached up and unbuttoned her jeans, helped her shimmy out of them. He handed her a tank top and shorts from her suitcase, but she couldn’t figure out which way they went, so he had to help her with that, too.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked, rumpled but begrudgingly dressed.

“No.”

“You seem like you’re mad at me.”

“It’s been a long day. I just want to sleep.”

“Can I sleep with you again?”

“If you want.”

“That’s not a yes.”

“It’s an ‘I don’t care.’”

“That doesn’t make me feel good.”

“Sometimes you say things that don’t make me feel good either.”

“Like what?”

“Like calling me a coward.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

She didn’t have anything to say to that, so he left to the bathroom, where he filled up her water bottle and brought it back to her. “Drink all of this.”

She did. The only light on was the bathroom, casting a pale glow over the bed. Bellamy pulled off his shirt and pants and folded them neatly and put them away in the drawers he had allotted for them. He stepped into a pair of pajama bottoms and ran a hand through his hair.

“Do you need anything else?” he asked.

“I’m okay.” The room was spinning less, but she still felt nauseous. “I’m going to go sit in the bathroom for a while.”

He crawled into bed and faced away from her without saying anything else. 

She wanted to tell him thank you, and that she loved him, but after a few minutes his breathing grew deep and even, so she stayed silent.


	10. Chapter 10

When Clarke awoke the next morning, she was in Bellamy’s bed, alone. Raven was asleep in her own bed, snoring. The curtains were closed, but Clarke found her phone which was plugged into the nightstand—Bellamy’s doing, probably—and squinted at the time. Almost noon. Also on the nightstand were a protein bar, a travel packet of aspirin, and a bottle of cold coffee from the convenience store downstairs. A matching set was left for Raven. Clarke buried her face in Bellamy’s pillow and groaned. It smelled like him, whatever he smelled like. Boy and cheap shampoo. Like their house, which she wished she could go back to.

Clarke got up and stumbled to the bathroom, where she puked until only dry heaves remained, then she got undressed and crawled into the shower where she sat under the warm spray, and when she felt like a human again, stood and washed her hair, draining the little shampoo and conditioner bottles completely. After she got dressed, she forced down the protein bar and aspirin and coffee, and stared at her phone willing him to text her to ask how she was feeling. He didn’t.

“Probably in a panel,” Raven muttered, as if reading Clarke’s mind.

Clarke’s throat felt raw and her voice came out as a rasp. "Yeah."

Raven spotted the stuff on the side table and sat up. “Did he do this?”

“Yeah.”

Raven made a strangled sound. “He’s seriously the best human." They sat in silence for a few minutes while Raven chugged her coffee, then she added, "Like back before I knew him, I thought maybe I just idolized him out of, like, internalized patriarchy or something. But he’s really great.”

“He is. And I’m a dick to him.”

“No you’re not.”

“I called him a coward for not being in a relationship with me. I threw myself on him after he told me explicitly he didn’t want me. I almost blew him in public.”

Raven ripped open the protein bar with her teeth. “Yikes.”

“I should just give up.”

"As much as I want to give you a pep talk or whatever, I really think maybe you should. For whatever reason, he’s not into it. You can’t force someone to fall in love with you.”

“Yeah,” Clarke said, ignoring the ache in her chest. She stared at her protein bar and suddenly wasn't hungry anymore. “You’re right. I’ll just...give him some space, I guess.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke didn’t feel up to going to the conference, and Raven went off to meet up with some of her writer friends from outside the program, so she took her laptop and settled at an offsite bar and wrote for a while. Not _The Ark,_ but a new story set in the same universe, about a guard in training harboring an illegal younger sister under the floor. He takes her to a masquerade ball, where she gets caught and imprisoned, and he decides to assassinate the chancellor in a conflated, meandering plot arc to get her back.

It was supposed to be a short story, but she wrote ten pages and realized it had barely begun, and that maybe the trainee guard belonged in the actual book somewhere, even if it was taking too much from Bellamy's story about Octavia. So she kept writing, and it hurt, everything hurt. She kept glancing at her phone which still had no text messages, and considered texting him first, and then Lexa dropped a heavy bag onto the table and sunk into the chair across from her.

“What’s up?” Lexa asked.

“Not much,” Clarke said. “Getting some writing done.”

“Still bummed out?”

“Yep. How’s the bookfair?”

“Packed. Murphy took over for the afternoon. Did you go to the dance party last night?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Hungover?”

“Uh huh.”

“Sucks.”

“Yeah.”

Lexa pulled a menu from behind the napkin dispenser. Clarke’s empty flatbread plate was still on the table because the server had given up on her once he realized she was basically loitering. Her iced tea hadn’t been refilled in an hour.

“There’s nothing I can eat here,” Lexa said. “Want to go to a raw place I saw a couple blocks away?”

It was better than moping about Bellamy, so Clarke closed her laptop and said, “Sure.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke had always considered Lexa somewhere between an acquaintance and friend, mostly because of the intensity and intimacy of her writing which shattered any kind of acquaintance-based boundaries they could have had, but which also didn’t necessarily shove them into friend territory. Writing programs were difficult social spaces to navigate. Clarke was surprised to find Lexa’s company so easy. Relieving, almost. Lexa guided the conversation thoughtlessly, didn’t allow silences, and didn’t seem to know the meaning of small talk. She asked invasive questions and laughed at inappropriate moments, name-dropped obscure poets and theorists that Clarke would have no way of knowing. She lectured when she spoke, was mildly condescending in a teasing way, and made such intense eye contact that Clarke had a hard time returning it.

“So what’s up with you and Bellamy?” Lexa asked, sucking at a green smoothie that smelled like feet.

Clarke liked the ambiance of the raw food place better than the bar. Sunnier. More people-watching. The chairs were comfortable. The food tasted like sod, though.

“We’re friends,” Clarke said. “And now roommates.”

“So you guys aren’t, like, together-together.”

“Just friends.”

Lexa stirred the smoothie. “Do you...want to be just friends, or?”

“I don’t know. I’ve brought it up a couple times, but we’re not really on the same page.” Last night suddenly flashed into her memory, what she'd been keeping hazy in the background of her mind now brought into the harsh relief of sobriety. The fervor with which he kissed her back at first, strong arms carrying her, gentle touch as he undressed her. Her entire body throbbed with the ache of his absence. 

“I get it.”

“You do?”

“I don’t know Bellamy that well, but based on his writing, he seems like he’s been through a lot. I don’t know what exactly, but I get the feeling it takes him a long time to connect. People like us, though…”

“What about people like us?”

“We’re boundary-pushers, you know? We seek out people and—” She clasped her hands together abruptly. “We see the relationship we’re capable of having with someone and want it to come to its obvious conclusion. Immediately.”

Another wave of nausea hit Clarke even though her hangover had waned. “I don’t like that.”

“It’s not a bad thing. We love broadly and widely and grossly and hotly. We’re the people who get assigned muses, who write the love songs, who offer a lens with which others view passion.”

“That makes it sound a little better.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way you love. And there’s nothing wrong with the way he does, either. You’re on a trajectory.” Lexa raised her arms and zoomed them across each other. “And your paths will eventually converge.”

“You really think so?”

“You seem like a woman who gets what she wants, Clarke Griffin. I have faith in you.”

 

* * *

 

It was a nice day out for being mid-March, in the fifties, and they decided to walk around the convention center. And walk, and walk, and walk. They talked about where they’d come from (Clarke: California, escaping a recently broken home; Lexa: a bad break-up in Oregon), what their plans were (Clarke: maybe teaching if she got better at it?; Lexa: backpacking maybe, applying for residencies and maybe a Fulbright), and what they thought of the program (Clarke: too many lit seminars; Lexa: mentorship lacking for experimentalists).

Finally Clarke got up the guts to ask, “So what happened with you and Echo?”

She’d been afraid Lexa would get cold and awkward, but she only snorted a sardonic laugh and said, “So you heard.”

“Not a lot. Just that there was a thing, then there wasn’t a thing, and the thing maybe involved some BDSM stuff.”

“That’s pretty much the story, yeah.” After a few seconds where she appeared to compose her thoughts as if readying herself for a performance, she continued, “I have a strict rule with subs that I don’t do romance. I feel like romance is a space for egalitarianism, and sex alone is a place to play with power. Echo disagreed. She considered power a fundamental part of the way she loved. That should have been my cue to pull back, but—I mean, you know what it’s like. We live in a college town in the middle of nowhere. I never dreamed I’d find an experienced sub here, let alone one who was into me. So I figured, you know, we’d deal.” She looked up at the sky and let out a long exhale. “We did not deal.”  

“That sucks, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay, because Echo maintained absolutely no discretion about it. When I broke things off, she started spreading rumors about me that I was cruel to her, that I led her on. That I made myself out to be somebody I wasn’t which thereby retroactively nullified her consent.”

“Wait. You don’t mean—”

“Yep. She didn’t come out and say it, but she implied it enough that people started questioning me, and everyone in the cohort started taking sides, and it was all a big mess that didn’t end until she finally graduated and we got a new pack of writers.”

“Wow.”

“I feel really awful I caused so much stress to the department. Jaha even got involved and made us all do a Title IX training. ‘If you see something, say something’ kind of deal.”

“Things seem pretty okay though now, right?”

Lexa smiled and offered a sidelong glance. “I’m a poet who’s been in prose workshop all year. That’s gotta tell you something.”

“The poets sided with Echo.”

“Yep. And it’s also why I’ve taken on _Tondc_ mostly by myself. Half my staff ghosted.”

“You’re doing a great job.”

Lexa ducked her head. It was weird seeing someone like her grow bashful at compliments. “Thanks. You know, Editor-in-Chief will probably go to you next year. I’m opening elections when we get back.”

“I’m not sure I can handle it.”

Lexa stopped walking and met Clarke’s gaze. “If there’s one thing this afternoon has taught me about you, Clarke, it’s that you can handle anything.”

 

* * *

 

Night fell and Clarke received a text from Raven in the group chat saying, _Staying at Luna’s tonight! She has an apartment here. See u both tomorrow xo_

Clarke watched as Bellamy’s read receipt appeared below it, and the ellipses bubble rise, and he said, _Have fun._

Clarke typed out a quick kiss emoji and pocketed her phone again.

“I have to head to a reading,” Lexa said. “Were you going to the dance party again tonight?”

“God, no,” Clarke replied. “I guess I’ll just head back to the hotel.”

“You could come to the reading if you wanted. It’s just a block away.”

Clarke couldn’t help smiling at her, this girl who took her terrible day and flipped it on its end. “I’d like that.”

The reading was held at a hole-in-the-wall bar, long and narrow, barely wider than her bedroom. The upstairs floor was set up so all the chairs faced a small landing with a single spotlight and a microphone. Below them, the floor throbbed with the music. Clarke got a seat near the front because they were early, and as she attempted to type out messages to Bellamy which she kept erasing—

_I wish you would take a chance on m_

_I’m sorry I’ve been pressur_

_We need to talk abou_

_I love_

—the bar filled up with attendees. Clarke kept a bottle of cider between her thighs that she slowly nursed. Lexa was somewhere “getting ready.” The emcee started the reading, a middle-aged woman who looked like she was probably a lot of people’s favorite professor. She thanked everyone for attending and encouraged them to buy the newest issue of whatever poetry mag this was for, and that it could be found at the book fair.

Clarke didn’t hate poetry, but a lot of it went a bit over her head. She never knew what kind of crit to offer Lexa in workshop, so she resorted to giving very thorough analyses of what she thought the poems meant, and occasionally pointed out when a word or two could be omitted, potentially at the sacrifice of the musicality. But that was what happened when you submitted poems to a prose workshop.

There were a lot of poets on the reading list tonight, according to the half-page flyer she’d been handed. The list was comprised, she guessed, of poets who had been published in the magazine over the past year. They each got a couple minutes to read. Clarke could never do a couple-minute reading. Everything she wrote was incredibly long.

After a half-dozen readers, Lexa took the stage. She was wearing something that looked like black war paint around her eyes, and a circular medallion on her forehead. She started the poem by grunting loudly and stomping her foot. She clapped her hands, and did it again, faster: grunt, stomp, clap, grunt, stomp, clap. Over and over until the audience joined in. Grunt, stomp, clap. Grunt, stomp, clap. It grew very loud, and Clarke wasn’t even aware when she joined in too, or how long it lasted. Then Lexa raised her fist in the air and the audience immediately silenced.

She started speaking words. Just strings of words that didn’t seem connected at all, couldn’t make an image or a sentence, but which held the cadence of logical thought. Then she said a word and would point the microphone at the audience so they would repeat. Orange. Persephone. Coagulate. Asymptote. Folgers. Crispin. Beacon. Urethra.

Like the grunt, stomp, clap, the repetition of words grew louder and faster. The audience, and Clarke, repeated them dutifully. Shouted them. Then Lexa abruptly stopped and walked off stage.

Clarke would never understand poetry.

 

* * *

 

After the dozenth reader, there was an intermission, so Clarke got up and went downstairs and ordered herself another cider. Lexa met her at the bar and put a hand on her lower back, which Clarke unthinkingly leaned into.

The music was loud, so she had to nearly shout in Lexa’s ear, “Your reading was great! Very...immersive.”

“Thanks,” Lexa said. Her lips grazed Clarke’s ear. “Let me get this round.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.” She was still wearing her war paint and medallion, and her lips were wide and pink and perfect. She continued staring at Clarke like she could see the inner workings of her mind, and every bad thing she’d ever done, and everything she had the potential to do. Maybe other people might find it unnerving, but Clarke loved it. Loved being inspected with such intensity.

The bar was packed with people even when intermission was over, and Lexa found a quiet corner by the bathrooms to stand and talk instead of going back to the reading, which still had a dozen more poets to go. Her hand was on the wall by Clarke’s head, and she was standing close so as to let people pass who needed to get to the bathrooms. Her breasts grazed Clarke’s upper arm, and Clarke could feel her breath on the side of her face.

Clarke wasn’t drunk at all, certainly not like last night, but she was mildly tipsy. Were she completely sober, she might have been expecting Lexa to kiss her, but she wasn’t, so when it happened, it came as a surprise. Which was also her excuse for kissing Lexa back.

Lexa had read her right—within seconds she had Clarke’s hair gripped in her fist, bit hard, insisted on Clarke’s full attention. Her mouth was small but demanding. She pulled moans out of Clarke’s throat that couldn’t be heard over the music, pressed her thigh between Clarke’s legs and rocked it against her cunt. Clarke rode her shamelessly, had no room to think, could only act. Barely breathing, just hanging on to whatever was happening. For the first time all day, she stopped thinking about Bellamy.

Lexa dipped her head down and began laving at Clarke’s throat, biting, sucking. Clarke’s head fell back against the wall.

She made the mistake of opening her eyes.

And there was Bellamy. Standing at the hallway threshold. Staring.

His expression was unreadable. She watched him swallow, clench his jaw.

“Bellamy,” she said, untangling herself from Lexa’s grasp.

Before she could reach him, he turned away and merged back into the crowd. She followed him out the door, ignoring Lexa’s “Clarke, stop.”

“Bell,” she said once she was outside. A cloud of air flooded out of her mouth.

He was walking quickly, hands in his pockets, head down. She ran to keep up with him. “Bell, wait. Please.”

She reached him, grabbed at his arm so he’d stop walking, but he shook out of her grip. Finally she ran in front of him, physically stopping him with her hands on his chest. His eyes were glassy and his heart raced under her palm; a slight tremor ran through him.

“You said,” she told him. “You said I could do whatever I wanted with whoever I wanted.”

He huffed a mirthless laugh. "That's what you chased me down to say? Look, Clarke, I can’t do this anymore.”

“Can’t do what?”

“This. You. All of it.”

“Are you asking me to move out?”

“No. I’ll go back to Jersey. Pay rent on the house until the lease is up.”

“No no no,” she said. “Don’t do this, Bell. We can work through this. We’re best friends.”

He met her eyes, pleading, broken. “Best friends don’t feel like this.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing, Clarke. I don’t want anything from you.”

Then he pushed past her, and this time Clarke didn’t follow.


	11. Chapter 11

By the time Clarke got back to the hotel, Bellamy was gone. His suitcase and toiletries. Empty drawers. Made bed.

Her phone was dead so she plugged it in, sat on the bed and buried her face in her hands. Moments later, a dozen text alerts rang in a row, probably the cohort group chat. Reluctantly, she looked at her phone.

A few were from Monty and Jasper asking if anyone was coming to the dance party, and when they got no response, strongly urging people to come to the dance party.

One was from Lexa that said, _i’m sorry about what happened. i’m here if you want to talk._

One from Bellamy in the group chat with Raven. _Taking a rental car home._

A reply from Raven. _Ok??_ Then,  _Wait you're old enough to rent a car??_

A separate text from Raven. _Wtf happened???_

Clarke replied, _Bellamy caught me making out with Lexa_

The ellipses bubble rose and fell. Finally Raven said, _There are too many things in that sentence._ Followed by, _Lexa? Really??_ and, _Didn’t he say you could play the field? Istg he said that._

_Yes, Lexa. We spent the day together and it just kind of happened. And yeah he said that but he’s still upset I think._

_Jesus god almighty if I had known MFAs were this fucking dramatic I would have stayed in engineering._ She added, _I’ll head back to the hotel. You shouldn’t be alone rn._

_You don’t have to._

_It’s fine. Be there soon xo_

It was nearly two in the morning by the time Raven got back to the hotel, and she had brought ice cream with her. Cherry Garcia.

And that was it. Lexa was wrong. Standing there, holding a pint of Cherry Garcia, Clarke couldn’t handle it. She leaned against Raven and cried.

 

* * *

 

They checked out of the hotel at eleven on Sunday and made it home that evening. The drive was less irritating coming back because Monty and Jasper were asleep, having slept a total of six hours out of the past seventy-two. Lexa drove one van, Clarke the other. Raven sat shotgun to Clarke. No one asked where Bellamy was, either because they were used to him ghosting, or Raven had told them he went home.

“Have you heard anything from him?” Clarke asked Raven quietly, so as not to wake up Monty and Jasper.

“A bit,” Raven said. “I asked if he was okay. He said he was. I asked if he wanted to talk. He said he didn’t. I assured him I wasn’t going to take sides, and he said he wouldn’t put me in a position where I had to.”

“That sounds hopeful.”

“Yeah,” Raven said, but it didn’t sound like she meant it.

Clarke didn’t necessarily expect Bellamy to be home when she got there, but the empty house still stung. AWP had fallen the week before spring break, so they didn’t have class tomorrow. She went into Bellamy’s room first and verified his typewriter was still there. It was the only item she knew he’d be sure to take with him if he moved out. Clarke set down her suitcase and sat on the couch. She pulled out her phone and texted Octavia.

_Is he with you?_

Like her brother, she replied immediately. _Yeah hes staying with me a few days._ She added, _fwiw Im on your side. I think hes being ridiculous_

 _Thanks,_ Clarke replied. _Is he okay?_

_No Ive never seen him this mopey its driving me nuts_

_Sorry_

_Not your fault!! This wouldnt of happened if you guys were together_

_True_

_Im trying to talk sense into him_

_Thanks_

_Np babe ill keep u posted_

After a long moment on the couch where Clarke didn’t let herself feel or think anything, she finally dragged herself up to put her suitcase away in her bedroom. She opened the door and turned on the light.

Something was on her bed.

A giant stack of pages held together by a binder clip. She picked it up.

 _The Delinquent,_ the title page said. _By Bellamy Blake_

It was the original typewritten copy. Maybe two hundred pages. Without even taking off her shoes or jacket, she pulled off the binder clip and turned the page.

_For Clarke Griffin_

Her heart sped up. She turned to the next page.

_If you ride your bike two hours down 40 on a Saturday morning, you can make it to the farmer’s market before they close and get free produce in exchange for packing the trucks. Another two hours home, and you ache all over but you have vegetables to feed your baby sister for a week. Some weeks, you cannot spare a four-hour bike ride._

_If you know where to look, you can find wild onions in your neighbor’s yard. Dented soup cans sell for a quarter cheaper than the sale price. Old bread is still fine if you cut the mold off._

_If you get really hungry, if your mom hasn’t been home in a week, if your baby sister won’t stop crying, you can walk across the street to the convenience store and sneak snacks into your pockets. Beef jerky, cheese sticks, bags of chips. High calorie, low content._

_If all you know is how to survive, you can at least sleep easy knowing you are willing to die for your baby sister._

_But until there is a gun in your hand, you do not know you are willing to kill for her._

Clarke continued reading, barely blinking, devouring his sentences which became smoother and more confident as the story unfolded. His narrative voice strengthened after just a few pages. He had no chapters, just line breaks. He didn’t go in chronological order, but hopped around from memory to memory in a way that seemed like stream-of-consciousness but she knew was likely controlled and took a lot of thought. She only rarely lost her grounding, and pulled a pen off her nightstand to mark those parts, and make an occasional underline under a sentence she liked. She circled his unnecessary adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases, his habitual narrative throat-clearing, as if apologizing or justifying his own writing, but otherwise the MS was clean. She didn’t make comments, in part because there was no room on the page, and also she didn’t want to stop reading long enough to jot them down.

The story went like this:

Bellamy started stealing packs of Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards from Walmart, opened the packs, biked across town, and traded them for cash. He got really good at it. Went to tournaments, not to play, but to trade. He generated a decent income which he used to pay for groceries for he and Octavia. His mother was rarely home, and he strongly implied that in addition to her daytime seamstress job, she did sex work on the side.

Enter a guy named Shumway, a comic book store employee who caught on to Bellamy’s scam and threatened to turn him in. Bellamy became his lackey, and there was some drug running involved, and the more Bellamy helped him, the more the guy threatened: police at first, then saying he’d come for Octavia, pretend to be her dad and pull her out of school, and Bellamy would never see her again. Bellamy was thirteen.

Shumway gave Bellamy a gun for runs in the bad parts of town. During one run, the cops were called. They tried to talk Bellamy down, told him to put away the gun and he wouldn’t get in trouble, but instead he panicked and fired.

Clarke looked at the pile of discarded pages, eyes burning. She wasn’t even a third of the way through. She couldn’t believe the story continued. More importantly, she didn’t want it to continue, to see what he had to endure after this.

She checked her phone. No messages.

So she continued reading.

 

* * *

 

She woke up on top of her covers, still in her jeans, pages of Bellamy’s manuscript strewn around her. She’d read until the sun rose and finally finished it. She was an emotional wreck about it, in part because it was a deftly written and compelling narrative, but also because it was Bellamy, all the shit he went through in the hearings and later in juvenile detention. The scene where he said goodbye to Octavia had wrenched an actual sob out of Clarke’s throat, and then again when he discovered writing—by telling stories in the letters he sent Octavia in lieu of letting her know how he was actually doing. Then again when he finally got out and they were reunited. And the story ended, and Clarke fell asleep before she did something as stupid as call him.

Clarke read the memoir a couple more times throughout spring break. Each time, she marked up the MS in a different color so he would know which reading it was. She started leaving marginal comments here and there, sometimes on the back. Sometimes the notes weren’t about the story at all, just her thoughts about her day because she couldn’t text him like she normally would. By Wednesday she’d begun drafting a crit letter for him by hand in a notebook. Page after page of shining praise and mild criticism, of analysis and the occasional reading recommendation. It was nearly a dozen pages by the time she was done.

At the end, she wrote, _I love you, I’m in love with you, and I want to be with you. For as long as you’ll have me._

Clarke should have spent spring break working on her seminar paper, or writing _The Ark,_ or anything else productive, but she only binge-watched Netflix and reread her favorite parts of _The Delinquent._ She ate nothing but dry cereal and Kraft mac ‘n cheese. She slept until one in the afternoon. She stared at her phone, willing Bellamy to call or text, but she only heard from Raven, who sent her dumb memes to cheer her up, and Octavia, who assured her that Bellamy was fine but still mostly intolerable. She also texted Wells a bit, but he’d never really gotten the hang of texting so the conversation didn’t last, and Lexa, who was chill when Clarke told her that what happened was a mistake, albeit a fun one, and she hoped they could stay friends.

It was Saturday when Raven showed up unannounced at noon. Clarke had fallen asleep on the couch the night prior, and the Netflix “Are you still watching?” screen was judging her.

“Go take a shower and get ready,” Raven said. She was already cleaning the mess of dishes in living room, which Clarke had only just now noticed had piled up.

“Why?” Clarke said, her face indented by the swirly throw pillow pattern.

“We’re going to the coffeeshop to get some work done.”

“It’s break.”

“It’s the weekend of break, which means you have class to plan and workshop submissions to read.”

“Don’t wanna.” Clarke turned over on the couch so her face was pressed against the back of it.

Raven pulled the throw pillow from under her head and hit her lightly. “You gotta.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke felt slightly more functional after a shower and a change of clean clothes, but the heavy grossness of a shitty diet and lack of movement still hung about her. It’d take a few days of classes to get back to normal. As Raven drove her to the coffeehouse, she stared out the window at the melting snow and wondered if Bellamy would be coming home tomorrow. She’d brought his manuscript with her in her laptop bag so it would look like she had more to work on than she actually wanted to work on, and also because for some reason she didn’t want to be without it, like his presence would be there even if he wasn’t.

Raven was ranting about Sherman Alexie when they entered the coffeehouse and stood in line to order. Clarke couldn’t think of anything to say about it because she’d never read Sherman Alexie, and also felt a bit like she was living in a cloud; reality felt very surreal and detached from her, but she was interrupted anyway by a brick wall slamming into her.

It took a second to realize the brick wall had arms that wrapped around her and was squealing nonverbally. It took a second longer to realize the squealing wall was Octavia.

“Oh my god, O,” Clarke said, pulling away. “What are you doing here? Where’s—”

Behind them in line, Bellamy cleared his throat. Clarke turned around. He made furtive eye contact, hands shoved in his pockets, messenger bag slung over his shoulder.

Clarke glared at Raven. “Did you plan this?”

“We both did,” Octavia said proudly.

“And now we’re leaving,” Raven added with a little wave.

Octavia blew a kiss at Clarke and punched Bellamy’s shoulder on her way out.

“Good luck,” Raven said, and walked out the door with Octavia in tow.

 

* * *

 

“So,” Clarke said. She ran her palms over her thighs.

“So,” Bellamy replied.

They had ordered coffee and sat down at their favorite table, all in rigid, painful silence.

Clarke finally said, “I’m really sorry, Bell. I—”

“No, don’t be. I’m sorry I—”

“No, I’m definitely at fault here.”

“No, I am.”

“Okay but I’m _more_ at fault.”

“I’m the most at fault.”

“I’m the most _most_ at fault.”

“Apology accepted,” Bellamy said. "It was shitty of me to string you along like that and freak out after I told you seeing other people was fine."

Clarke's heart fell at the phrase _string you along_ but she managed a wavering smile and said, “It's okay."

After another stilted silence where they each took a long, relieved sip of coffee, Bellamy asked, “So are you and Lexa...?”

“What? Of course not.”

“You mean you didn’t—”

“No, not at all. We barely even talk. What happened was a mistake, and I’m sorry you had to see it.”

Bellamy leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. His muscles seemed to loosen, his shoulders dropping. “I’m glad I did.”

“Really?”

“It made me realize…” He trailed off by running a hand over his face. Then he fidgeted in his seat and met her eyes and said, “It made me realize I can’t stand the thought of you with someone else. I know I said you could do what you wanted, but I didn’t think I’d react the way I did. I didn’t think I’d ever be in a position where I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship while also—” He stopped talking, pursing his mouth shut and looking away again.

“While also what?”

He swallowed, and took a steadying breath, and said, “While also being in love with someone.”

Clarke wanted to leap across the table at him, but she was frozen to the spot. So in lieu of a reply, she leaned down and rifled through her bag. She pulled out _The Delinquent,_ now messy with food and tear stains, tattered and marked-up, pages curled. Her crit letter rested on top.  

Bellamy immediately pulled it toward him. “What did you do to it?”

“Read it a handful of times.”

“You didn’t have to destroy it.”

“It’s better now. I axed all your dumb compound adjectives.”

“They offer clarity and a rhythmic cadence to the sentence.”

“They’re clunky and unnecessary.”

“Says the girl who starts every paragraph with a hanging participle.”

“Just read the letter.”

Bellamy glanced at her, wide-eyed and maybe a little afraid, then something settled on his face—resignation, maybe. He started reading, and Clarke fiddled on her phone, not really doing anything, just scrolling through apps looking at pictures and posts without paying attention.

He got to the end and seemed to stare at the last sentence for a long moment. He swallowed heavily. “You do?”

“I’m in it for the long haul.”

“You are.”

“I’ve seen the big picture, Bell. And I love what I see.”

“But I—”

“Didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done in the same situation. The only difference between us is that it happened to you and not me. I’m sorry it happened at all, and if I could go back in time and trade places with you, I would.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You couldn’t have done anything.” She reached out and put her hand on top of his. The first time they’d touched in over a week, but it felt like so much longer, like she’d been dying of dehydration and someone had finally handed her a drink. “It’s not your fault. None of it was your fault.”

He looked away, out the window. Wiped at his reddened nose with the back of his hand. Outside it was starting to snow again, late spring icy flurries, hopefully the last of the season.

She didn’t let go of his hand, let him compose himself in silence. When he looked at her again, he’d gone back to normal. Stern expression, Resting Bitch Face, MFA ghost. She realized now why he did all this, why he came off the way he did, why he pushed people away even in the way he set his shoulders.

But it wouldn’t work on her anymore.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

“Whatever you want.”

“I think…” He held her hand in both of his own, stroked the back of it with his thumb. “We should go on a date.”

She smiled. “What about being coworkers?”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “I graduate in May. How much trouble can we cause in two months?”


	12. Chapter 12

“Can we have pre-date sex?” Clarke called from her bedroom. She was combing through her closet looking for the cocktail dress she’d intended to wear to the _Tondc_ welcome party what felt like a decade ago.

“Nope,” Bellamy called across the hall.

“We can hear you,” Raven said from the living room.

“Don’t be gross,” Octavia added. From the sounds of it, they were playing Super Mario Brothers. Octavia was on spring break now, so she’d be with them all week.

“We’re gonna be gross for a long time,” Clarke said. “Might want to go to Raven’s for the night.”

She stepped into the dress and pulled it up, crossed her arms over her chest and went into the bathroom where Bellamy had just finished shaving, wiping his face with a hand towel. He was wearing a button-up shirt and pressed slacks and he looked somehow hotter than usual. She turned around.

“Zip me,” she said, holding her hair over her shoulder.

He looked her up and down; she felt it rather than saw it. “Whoa.”

The dress was baby blue, very short, and very tight. “You like it?”

“You’re gonna freeze.”

“Bell.”

“Come on. You could wear a potato sack and I’d still think you're hot.” He tugged the zipper up. Through the mirror she watched him lean down and press a kiss to her bare shoulder. Another at the crook of her neck. A third behind her ear. Quietly, he said, “Seems useless when I’m just going to take it off later.”

She moved away before she got too distracted. “I asked for pre-sex and you already said no.”

“That was before you put this on.”

“You’ll have to wine me and dine me first, Professor Blake.”

He made a frustrated noise. “That’s not even fair.”

“I asked, you declined. Your fault.” She backed out of the bathroom and rushed back to her bedroom to put on her makeup.

 

* * *

 

He took her to the nameless bar that had become their regular spot, after offering somewhere nicer, but she insisted she was really in the mood for a cheeseburger and Guinness, so that was where they ended up.

“Is it prom or something?” the server asked. In all the times they’d been there, Clarke had never seen another employee, but it also rarely had other customers. She wondered how the place stayed in business, then realized she probably didn’t want to know.

“It’s our first date,” Clarke told him. They were sitting in their regular pew booth by the jukebox.

“Sure it is,” the guy said, unconvinced.

“First official date,” Bellamy added.

The guy gave him a look that adequately summarized all the drama and chaos they’d been through over the past year.

“The usual?” he asked.

“Yep,” Clarke said.

“Two pounds of pan-seared gizzards, sure thing.”

When he came back with their Guinnesses and left again, Clarke reached out a hand and stopped Bellamy from picking up his glass. “Before an ounce of alcohol touches either of our lips and you justify any reason not to fuck me stupid tonight, I’m giving you my full and completely sober consent.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Okay.”

“And I’m on birth control and clean, so.”

“I’m clean too.”

“No condom then?”

He cleared his throat and said, “No condom,” then took a long pull from his beer. His face was flushed. Clarke wished their food would come faster.

 

* * *

 

In some ways it was the best date of Clarke’s life and also the worst. Best because it was Bellamy, and she was fairly certain she wouldn’t be on a date with anyone else for a long, long time. Worst because she was so keyed-up she forgot how to make conversation. She found herself giggling stupidly for no reason, and when Bellamy asked, “What’s so funny?” she covered her face and went, “I can't believe it took this long.”

“I had to write you a book first,” he said.

“Are non-writers like this? Do they have to declare their love in two hundred pages of well-wrought prose?”

“I think most of them probably do a different kind of grand gesture. Would you have liked it better if I hired a pilot to write ‘Dear Clarke, I tried to kill a guy once, hope you still want to date me’ in the sky?”

She ate a fry. “Gonna go with yes.”

“I’ll remember that when I propose.”

She opened her mouth to spew some kind of retort, but his words sank into her brain and she froze. “Wait, really?”

“What?”

“You want to get married.”

“Not this second, but...eventually, maybe.”

“What about kids?”

“Only if, you know, we—rhetorical we—have enough money to support them.” He picked at the remnants of his burger; it wasn’t like him to leave any behind. “Should I not have said that?”

“No, I’m—surprised is all. I maybe possibly also want to marry you and have kids.”

“Is this a conversation we should be having on a first date?”

“It is now."

 

* * *

 

They paid the bill and said goodbye to the server whose name Clarke still didn’t know, and headed toward the car, which was parked down the street. Bellamy took Clarke’s hand as they walked.

“You want to go somewhere for a drink? Dessert?” Bellamy asked.

“I’d rather go home, get naked, and fuck you until I pass out.”

“Oh. Okay.”

They finally made it to the car, where Bellamy kicked on the heat to max. He was right—Clarke was freezing. Even fleece-lined leggings and a coat weren’t enough. The drive home was silent, his hand on her knee, which slowly inched up her thigh. She shifted down her seat a little and spread her legs, so he fingered her over her leggings. It was embarrassing how fast she got wet, or maybe she had been since realizing it was finally going to happen.

He rubbed her in rough circles until she was panting against him. Her eyes were closed when he stopped the car and pulled his hand away, but when she opened them she realized they were home.

She bounded out of the car and into the house and threw her coat on the couch. She reached behind her back to pull her zipper down but couldn’t reach it. “Can you help with this?”

Suddenly he was standing behind her, chest pressed to her back, hands on her hips. Like earlier, he leaned down and pressed kisses to her neck. “We’re not in a rush.”

“I am,” she said. “I’m definitely in a rush.”

He laughed against the crook of her neck and ran his hands up her stomach to cup her breasts.

“You’re torturing me,” she said.

“Good,” he replied. She could feel his cock against her ass, teeth gently grazing her ear. Then he stepped back and she spun around to look at him, hands on his chest.

She wanted to kiss him, she did, but she stopped herself. Instead she ran her hands up to his face and held it and asked, “Are you sure about this?”

“I thought we did the consent thing already.”

“No, I mean _this._ All of it. You’re not doing it because you feel pressured, and you won’t wake up and change your mind?”

He lifted her chin and leaned down to press their lips together, a soft, sweet kiss of a kind he hadn't yet given her. “No pressure,” he muttered against her mouth. He kissed her again, this time more deeply. She sucked his lip between her teeth, found herself letting out a small sigh of relief. He pulled away and said, “I won’t change my mind. I trust you, Clarke.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I really do.”

Then she pushed up on her toes and kissed him again. Between kisses he asked, “My room or yours?”

“Yours,” she said, because it was clean, and Octavia would probably be staying in Clarke’s room for the next week.

So she took him by the hand and dragged him into the bedroom where he closed the door in case Octavia decided to come home for some masochistic reason. He unzipped her dress, and while she shimmied out of it and dropped her leggings, he unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and untucked it from his pants.

When she was down to her bra and underwear, she reached for his belt and said, “Oooh, can I? I’ve never gotten to do the thing.”

“What thing?”

She unbuckled his belt and pulled it out of the loops. It made the whoosh sound she liked so much.

“I love that sound,” she said. She went to help him with the rest of his clothes, but before they were all off they ended up tumbling onto the bed in another fit of kissing, and Clarke scooted up to the head of the bed and Bellamy crawled after her.

“What do you want me to do to you?” he asked, kissing down her sternum and reaching under her to unclasp her bra.

“Go down on me,” she said, arching her back up to give him better access. “Please.”

She could feel him smiling against her skin. “Yes, Princess.”

Bra gone, he sucked a nipple into his mouth and Clarke settled into the pillows for the long haul. With the house empty, she didn’t bother biting back noises, and Bellamy responded beautifully to them, taking stock of what she liked and didn’t, intuitively mapping her body with his mouth.

She ran her fingers through his hair as he climbed further down her body to settle between her legs. He kissed her upper thigh, inching closer to her cunt until barely grazing it with his lips over the fabric of her underwear. He nosed her clit, kissed it, and finally clutched at her panties to pull them down. She lifted her hips and he tugged them off and tossed them aside.

When he leaned down again, his tongue felt wide and hot against her. He started slow, trying things, seeing what she reacted to—sucking and biting her clit, swiping broad versus narrow strokes. Fucking her with his tongue. She wasn’t much help because it was all working for her.

He slipped two fingers into her, fucked her with them slowly. She shifted her hips down against his hand so he’d go faster and harder, but he only let out a little laugh and kept on with his steady movement.

The frustration of it was infuriatingly effective. Somehow, unlike any other oral she’d ever had, she found herself climbing to orgasm without forcing it. He was going to make her come with just his mouth and fingers without her having to concentrate and offer feedback.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” she breathed, clutching his hair, hips grinding against his mouth.

He went just a fraction faster, lifted his other hand to press down on her and meet the fingers inside to his palm. It sent her reeling. She had no time to brace herself for the impact of her orgasm shooting up her spine. No control over the loud cries escaping her throat. No awareness of time or how long she was coming.

He licked gently at her until she started writhing, and pulled his fingers out, trailed back up her body with kisses and lay beside her.

When she finally caught her breath, she said, “That was just okay. You could probably do better.”

“Are you going to write me a crit letter?”

“‘Dear Bellamy, thank you for going down on me. In this piece, we have a long-awaited first date where our heroes’ relationship has finally culminated into sex’—” She let out a sharp intake of breath as Bellamy ran a hand up her stomach and stopped at her breast to toy with a nipple.

“Guess we’re done for the night?” Bellamy asked.

“Fuck you.”

“I can do that.”

He shucked off his boxers and undershirt and climbed between her legs again, cock in hand as he stroked it to full hardness. He slicked it against her soaked cunt, head dipping just barely into her on the pass.

Still sensitive, Clarke started breathing heavily again, stomach fluttering, and she said, “Rough, please.” He opened his mouth as if to argue and she said, “No, you won’t hurt me. Yes, we can do sweet later. Sweet is for morning sex.”

Instead of answering, he pushed his cock inside her with one long, quick move, all the way to the hilt. Clarke cried out. Before she could catch her breath, he began fucking her, proper fucking her, headboard-slamming-into-the-wall fucking her.

He grabbed her hands and held her wrists above her head in one of his own, his other curled around her throat. Again, not squeezing. At this point she’d masturbated so many times with her own hand on her throat that the feeling alone had almost conditioned her to come. She’d have to figure out how to convince him to actually choke her some day.

He let go and leaned down and said, “Hold on,” so she wrapped her arms around his neck and he lifted her into his lap, where she sank down onto him and he fucked up into her. It took a moment to find a rhythm together, but once they did, Clarke was amazed to find she could probably come again like this. Bellamy picked up on this and reached between them to rub her clit with his thumb.

This orgasm was smaller than the first, though crested over her like a tidal wave in slow motion, and she cried out just as loudly. She throbbed around him, and Bellamy had to still his movements and clutch the base of his cock to keep from coming.

She kissed him sloppily, sweetly, just breathing together, and she didn’t think she’d ever had so much fun in her life, and she’d definitely never loved someone as much as she loved him.

“I love you,” she said, like a question, as if she were just realizing it for the first time.

His voice was strained but playful. “I would hope so.”

She laughed, louder than it warranted, just because she was happy, so happy to have this man—this talented, beautiful, broken-but-healing man—inside her.

“Say it,” she said, still smiling, rolling her hips just a little.

He hissed through his teeth. “I love you, Clarke.”

“That’s better.” She pushed him down on his back without lifting off his cock, her hands pressed against his chest as she rode him.

“You want to come like this?” she asked.

He nodded, then held her hips tightly in his hands and fucked up into her. Clarke braced herself on the bed and met his movements, squeezed him on the upstroke. His thrusts grew shallower but faster and he gripped her so roughly she was sure his fingers would leave bruises. He went still and let out a long exhale as he came, cock throbbing inside her, filling her. She bent down and kissed him through it, rolled her hips in little circles until he slipped out of her.

“This is my favorite part,” she said, and looked down to watch his come drip down her thighs.

He shifted up on his elbows to look for himself. “Fuck, that’s hot. I’ve never come in someone without a condom.” He reached between her legs and fingered her, got them wet and sucked them into his mouth.

She laughed, delighted, and said, “You’re filthy,” but then took his hand and sucked his fingers too.

“Another thing we have in common,” he said, fucking her mouth slowly with his fingers. “Shower or sleep?”

She let go of his fingers with a pop. “Shower, sleep, morning sex, shower again, breakfast.”

 

* * *

 

Which was exactly what they did. Clarke woke up to the feeling of Bellamy’s cock inside her, which she told him the night before was okay, and also that if she could wake up every morning to the feeling of being fucked, that would be appreciated.

He rolled her on her stomach and climbed over her legs and slid into her. She loved it because she didn’t have to do anything at all, just relish in the languid feeling of a lazy morning lay. He came inside her again, then got her off by smearing his come over her clit with his fingers, and then they talked about breakfast but ended up falling back asleep.

It was noon by the time they made it out of bed, and two by the time they were dressed and ready to head to the coffeehouse to get some work done.

Clarke wasn’t surprised to find that everything else was the same about their day as it would have been if they hadn't gotten together, save for two differences: Bellamy leaned down to kiss her before ordering their coffees; and for the first time since she had known him, it didn’t feel like he was carrying something hidden on his back. There was no physical evidence for the feeling—he didn’t sit up straighter or smile more. He still typed with three fingers. He still got so focused in his work that he couldn’t hear her when she spoke to him, so she had to text him instead to see if he wanted more coffee. He was exactly the same Bellamy as before.

But now, now she could see all the cracks, all the ways in which other people had shattered him. They would work together, she knew, on smoothing them, sanding them, mending them over time. And he would heal just as she would heal, and the world would find new and undiscovered ways of chipping away at them, but together, neither of them would have to stay broken for long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is an epilogue!


	13. Epilogue

Clarke knew that being in a relationship with Bellamy Blake would have its disadvantages. She had imagined that one day he would insist she get in the habit of cleaning out her mugs, or judge her harshly when he found out exactly how much she spent on books, or maybe just straight-up get tired of her. He knew vaguely that her family was loaded, and she figured when the time came for him to meet her mom, he’d realize just how shiny the silver spoon was that had always been in Clarke's mouth.

She did not imagine the biggest challenge in their first month together would be workshop.

He decided a little late in the game to workshop his memoir. Clarke’s feedback had given him courage to show the cohort. He trimmed it down to two personal essays: one about everything that he’d done to lead up to the shooting, and the other about his time locked up.

She’d never seen him so nervous to workshop something. He couldn’t sleep for days before, tossed around in bed until Clarke had to sleep in her own room. But then he’d just follow her and apologize and hold her until she fell asleep. They spent days talking about it, Bellamy spewing a hundred but-what-ifs, Clarke dissuading them with everything from, “They’re your cohort, they love you,” to, “In a couple months you’ll never have to talk to any of them again if you don’t want.”

Clarke had trouble understanding his hesitation. She didn’t write CNF, but if she did, she wouldn’t care who read it. She was an open book, literally. She’d tell anyone anything about herself. In fact she _enjoyed_ talking about herself and finding people invested in allowing her to indulge this small narcissism. Her openness was part of what made her a good writer, and why her work complemented Bellamy’s so well: in writing, his greatest weakness was how closed off he was, even to himself sometimes, and it was evident on the page. _The Delinquent_ was the first thing he’d ever written that started to climb out of the restrictive pit in which he’d placed himself.

When his workshop on the first essay began, everyone was silent. Monty flipped through a couple pages. Lexa jotted down an additional note on her crit letter. Raven looked around expectantly wanting someone else to talk. Murphy opened his mouth to launch the discussion, but closed it again before saying anything. Nate scrolled through the document on his computer. Pike did absolutely nothing to break the ice even though it was his job.  

So Clarke said, “So this was really good.”

Bellamy glanced at her both in gratitude and _seriously, that's all you have to say?_

“I think that’s the problem,” Nate said. “It’s too good.”

“The narrative voice is really strong,” Lexa offered.

“Can we talk about how engaging it is?” Raven asked. “Like I know it’s different because we all know Bellamy, but if I had picked this up on its own, I wouldn’t have been able to put it down.”

“Quaker knock that,” Jasper said.

“Pub-lish, pub-lish, pub-lish,” Murphy chanted.

They continued like that, offering praise far longer than Pike usually allowed, which was a testament to how little he thought needed fixed. As usual, despite attempting discretion, Clarke showed too many of her cards in the way she spoke about Bellamy’s writing—fangirling, basically, which she felt less bad about now that he was her boyfriend. Which—actually, they hadn't talked about that yet, she just kind of assumed, and that seemed like a bad idea. Unlike his other workshops, once the ball had gotten rolling, she had a hard time getting a word in because everyone was so eager to offer their compliments now that they knew Pike would let them all gush rather than condemn.

She found, strangely, that she was getting turned on. Maybe because Bellamy was right beside her, their knees touching occasionally, and it always felt so weird being in a public setting with someone you were intimate with, like no one else knew the little gasps he made whenever she moved her tongue a certain way over his cock. Maybe because she'd slept poorly, having tried to fuck the restless tension out of him for three hours last night. Maybe because she was just so proud of him.

Bellamy took notes while they spoke, and when she looked at him, he was making the face he made when he was trying very hard not to smile.

The criticism portion consisted mostly of questions, wanting to know more, offering where he might put an additional brush of detail here or there to round out all the context needed. At the end, when he told them it was actually much longer, a whole book, Pike said, “You should start querying agents with this.”

“I don’t know,” Bellamy said. “I don’t think it’s—”

“It is,” Pike replied, which was the nicest thing he’d ever said about anybody’s work.

By the end of workshop, Clarke was nearly crawling out of her skin. She assumed Bellamy would want to fix dinner and have a post-workshop cool-down discussion like they usually did, helping each other verify what comments were bullshit and which they should listen to.

As they migrated out of the room, a few people stopped to tell Bellamy personally how much they enjoyed the essay, and encouraged him to query, and Lexa even said, “That was incredibly brave of you, and I’m glad you gave us the opportunity to read your truth.”

Now finally disbursed and heading down the stairwell, Bellamy told Clarke, “I have to get something from my office.”

So Clarke waited on the landing, impatient and irritated, the thought of Bellamy's mouth on her cunt never straying far from her mind, then he opened the door and gestured his head toward the hallway. “You should come with me.”

“Okay,” she said, skeptically.

She followed him to his office, where he keyed open the door and then closed it behind her, and before she could ask what was going on, he crowded her against the wall and kissed her.

“Oh thank god,” she said as he flicked open the button of her jeans. He slid his hand into her underwear and slipped his fingers inside her.

“Fuck, you’re already wet,” he said. “Workshop shouldn’t be that hot.”

“Can’t explain it,” Clarke said, panting.

“Me neither.”

She ended up sliding her pants and underwear down to her thighs and letting Bellamy bend her over his desk and fuck her. He pulled her hair until her back was bent like a bow, other hand over her mouth to silence her obnoxious moans.

She reached between her legs and fingered herself, came around his cock trying to stay as quiet as she could. He pulled out and finished himself on her lower back, shoving her shirt up so he wouldn’t get any on her clothes.

He cleaned her up with a tissue and she pulled up her pants. "Are you my boyfriend?"

"Obviously," he said, tossing the tissue in the trash. 

"Okay, well, I think a lot of things are obvious that you don't, so excuse me for getting clarification." She opened the camera on her phone to make sure her makeup wasn't too messed up, and added, "So we're, like, exclusive."

"Clarke."

"Just checking."

 

* * *

 

A lot of good things happened in quick succession in April and May:

  1. Clarke finished the first draft of _The Ark._
  2. She also got elected as Editor-in-Chief of _Tondc._
  3. Bellamy got “Wanheda” accepted by _Tin House._
  4. Pike set up a meeting for him with an agent he thought would like _The Delinquent_ and short story collection.
  5. Jaha told Bellamy he could stay on as an adjunct next year if he couldn’t find a Visiting Assistant Professor job somewhere.
  6. Bellamy’s students nominated him for Outstanding Teacher of the Year and he won.
  7. Bellamy graduated.
  8. Bellamy proposed.



To the first, they celebrated by having a dinner party workshop with Raven, Jasper, Monty, and Bellamy, who had all read the thrilling conclusion (which Clarke actually hated, which was why she needed feedback). She liked the casual workshop style so much better than the classroom—everyone’s feedback was efficient and to-the-point, focused more on exactly what she needed to do to revise and publish, and not focusing on overall craft or improvement.

Bellamy had begun coming to every department party and event. He hung out with Raven on his own sometimes when Clarke needed alone time. He offered to help Lexa finish up the newest issue of _Tondc._ He laughed without looking guilty about it. He started working out with Nate, went to the batting cages with Jasper and Monty, and snapped Octavia back rather than just looking at hers.

Bellamy baked Clarke’s favorite cookies to celebrate her election as Editor-in-Chief, but actually it was because she was panicking about it—she'd never actually read an issue of  _Tondc,_ so how could she run it? He assured her (with words first, and then later with his mouth) that she would be great at it.

Bellamy waited nearly twenty-four hours to show Clarke his _Tin House_ acceptance, and she was furious with him for it, but he said it was because he hadn’t actually opened the email, only read the preview: “Thank you for submitting to _Tin House._ We’re pleased to—”  

“If you don’t see the word ‘unfortunately’ in the preview, then it’s an acceptance,” Raven told him.

“You idiot,” Clarke said, holding his phone in her shaking hands. It was such a big deal, and he wasn’t treating it like anything.

“Probably didn’t get many submissions this round,” he said.

“Oh my god,” Clarke said. “It’s _Tin House_! They’re so balls-deep in submissions, they have to make themed issues.”

That night he fucked her more roughly than usual, the only sign that “Oh shit, I’m a published author” had finally landed. She took advantage of it and asked if he would spank her, which he did, and which she enjoyed very, very much.

A couple days later, he got home late, looking pale and wide-eyed like he’d just witnessed something horrible. Clarke stood from where she sat painting her toenails on the couch.

“Bell? Are you okay?” she asked as she took his clipboard out of his hand. He didn’t have a coat because it was the first warm week of the year, finally.

“She wants to read the memoir. And the story collection.” He reached into his pocket to pull out his wallet and hand her the agent’s card.

“Holy shit,” Clarke said. She’d heard of the agency. It was a big one in New York.

“Pike got funding to fly her here just to meet me. He asked if he could send her some pages, and I didn’t think anything of it. I thought he was just being nice.”

“Holy _shit_.”

“She was really eager,” he said. “She said if the whole thing was as good as the excerpt, someone at one of the big five would pick it up ASAP. She wants to read the essays too and pitch them to bigger mags. She said they’d look at them because of the _Tin House_ publication.”

_“Holy shit.”_

He sank down onto the couch and buried his face in his hands. She sat down beside him and rubbed his back.

"It's happening so fast," he said.

"What needs to happen now?”

He sat up straight and rubbed his palms over his thighs. “I need to send her the MS, the essays, and the collection.”

“This is amazing.”

He shook his head. “It’s not real. It can’t be real.”

“It is real, and you’re going to get one, if not two, book deals out of it.”

He stilled, took in a long breath, and looked at her. “If I sell a book, I can teach full-time.”

God, it was so Bellamy to think more about being able to teach than the success of a major publication. 

“I didn’t think—when I got into construction, I used to have these dumb daydreams, these little stories I told myself while I worked, that one day someone would want to pay me for my brain and the way it could perceive things, not just for being a body. A tool.”

She leaned into him and kissed his cheek. He turned his head and caught her lips to his, kissed her sweetly in a way they usually didn’t. “And I didn’t think I’d ever find someone who would love me for my mind, either.”

“I do,” she said, smiling against his mouth. “And also all the desserts you make.”

He let out a small laugh and kissed her again, more deeply this time, and she could feel the heat in it ramping up, and knew if she didn’t break away now they’d get distracted with sex instead of emailing the agent. She pulled away and he made a sad noise. She dragged his laptop onto her lap and opened it. “Let’s send your stuff over to the agent before she forgets you exist.”

For graduation, Bellamy wasn’t going to walk at Commencement despite Clarke and Octavia’s insistence, but it was actually Raven, who was so genuinely sad that he wouldn’t be walking with her that he changed his mind. Octavia’s semester was over and she was staying with them through summer, so Clarke was now living in Bellamy’s room and Octavia in Clarke’s room, and it was a lot of stuff and people (and also Raven was over most of the time, too) but they made it work.

Clarke and Octavia cheered as Bellamy, Raven, Lexa, and the rest of the second-years walked across the stage for their diplomas, and spent the evening at a group graduation party where everyone got drunk at Bellamy’s house, and pretended to be very shocked when Clarke drunkenly kissed Bellamy right in front of them.

“What?” Clarke said, wobbling on her feet. Bellamy put a hand on her waist to steady her. “Like you didn’t know.”

Being able to adjunct next semester allowed Bellamy to breathe easier, knowing he could afford to stay with Clarke while she finished up her MFA. The teaching award was just a happy bonus that came with a couple hundred dollars and a certificate. They’d have an entire year to figure out where they wanted to go next.

Which was what led Bellamy to take a knee during their weekly Tuesday cheeseburger-and-Guinness. The place, as usual, was empty, the single employee whistling in the kitchen. On the jukebox Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” was playing, and Clarke should have realized what was happening as soon as the song came on.

He even had a ring which he was sure Raven had helped him pick out, and which explained his long and unexplained afternoon absence the Saturday prior. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, having spent the day grading papers.

“Clarke,” he began, fiddling with the ring box.

“I can’t believe you’re actually doing this,” she said looking down at him on the grimy carpet, but she was grinning. It was so cheesy. If someone wrote it into a story, she’d cross out the section and write, _Be weirder._

But this wasn’t a story, it was her life, and she wanted it to be as cheesy as fucking possible.

“I feel like my luck is about to run out,” Bellamy said, “so I wanted to do this while things were still good, because I know they won’t be always. But I have faith in us during the bad times, and I don’t know what we’ll do or where we’ll go when you graduate, or if your mom will like me, or if maybe Octavia will end up living in our basement for a decade. What I’m trying to say is, I really want your book collection, and there’s no other way to legally obtain it. Will you marry me?”

She was laughing while crying and she wanted to tell him to go fuck himself but her throat wouldn’t work, so she just ended up nodding, and he surged forward and kissed her.

The cheeseburgers were better than they normally were, and rather than talking about their eventual wedding, or graduation, or their writing careers, they talked instead about Clarke’s next project, a graphic novel about a boy trapped in space, while a girl on earth sent radio transmissions to the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few people made comments about how, like, this fic probably isn't that accurate to MFA life, so here are a complete list of inaccuracies for those curious:  
> -MFA students are not nearly as pedantic about grammar and usage as Bellamy and Clarke (and me).  
> -Bob Morley is apparently 5'10, not 6'.  
> -You cannot find a hotel near AWP the week before it happens.  
> -I definitely underplayed the amount of grading there is. Like 90% of fully funded MFAs are teaching and grading.  
> -Also underplayed how much we talk about writing/reading. As in, it is all we talk about. It's exactly like fandom in that way.  
> -Workshop isn't nearly as mean as I've made it out to be. At least the ones I've been in weren't like that. I've heard horror stories, though.  
> -Getting a book deal right out the gate is a rarity, but not impossible. You do get to meet agents, but not usually for pitching your thesis.
> 
> Everything else though, like the constant partying, and departmental dramz, and especially AWP is all pretty on point for my experience. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! Now I have to, you know, finish grading, writing my finals, and graduate (literally in less than a week), then face the wide, terrible world of post-MFA bullshittery. 
> 
>  
> 
> **If you enjoyed this fic, consider[reblogging the photoset.](https://bettsfic.tumblr.com/post/173965843762/guy-in-your-mfa-clarke-failing-to-get-into-med)**
> 
>  
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](http://www.bettsfic.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/bettsfic).


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